Design Processes for Bodily Interaction ?

Designing interactive systems that have illusive interaction qualities, such as suppleness or pliability, is challenging. In several design projects aiming for bodily and emotional interaction, we have aimed to find concepts, methods or processes that can capture the essence of the sought experience and steer the design process in a successful and efficient direction. Our attempts include using e.g. Laban-analysis of emotionally-oriented movement, video-cards from ethnographic studies of users in movement, or simply explicitly naming and defining the sought interaction quality. Our experiences point to the importance of moving from low-fi prototyping to high-fi – no matter which artefact is used to keep the design team on track. Repeatedly exposing unfinished prototypes not only to prospective end-users, but also to the whole design team has been another important part of our process. Finally, a deeper, theoretical and designoriented understanding of emotional and bodily interaction is badly needed.