Please add comments and discuss this paper – the liveliness of the discussion will help us decide the most suitable papers to be presented at Alt-HCI in September.
Abstract: Focusing on the intersection of wearable technologies and interactive architecture, we examine three effects of remediation on the wearable space: (1) re-embodiment, (2) bricolage and (3) interdisciplinary convergence. This conceptual piece of research surveys the fields of wearable technologies and interactive architecture to understand their synergic co-existence that creates the wearable space, while identifying the bottlenecks for the diffusion of these technologies and addressing future implications for human-computer interaction.
Pingback: - July 19, 2012
Alt-HCI 2012 
An interesting paper that has many resonances with my own stuff on spaces and blended interaction. I have a lot of sympathy with the ideas except for the intelligent agents bit. Sensors are pretty dumb and it is very difficult to make the sort of high-level inferences that Ami and context aware computing have been looking for, unsuccessfully, for many years. I would rather put the power in the hands of the users and design systems that are transparent enough for people to appropriate and put to their own use.
I do like the remediation stuff. There is some nice relevant work by Mikel Wiberg on material design and how HCI needs to take a ‘turn to the material’. There is an interesting debate to be had there with our own preference of the ‘turn to the spatial’.
TEI ’10 Proceedings of the fourth international conference on Tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction
Pages 137-144
Posted by david benyon | July 17, 2012, 2:18 pmHi, David,
Thank you for your helpful comment.
I agree with your view on sensors.
But they are quite cheap, easy to apply, and developing rapidly.
So I expect smarter and more reliable sensors in the near future.
If you tell me where to access your papers/ works, I would be very much interested to read them.
Soo Hee
Posted by Soo Hee Lee | August 9, 2012, 5:55 amInteresting paper that brings together various concepts to help understand space, blended interaction and the role of the user. Discussing at the three levels (Micro, meso, macro) helps enrich the complexity of this research.
Posted by Pamela Yeow | July 30, 2012, 8:59 amHi, Pamela, thanks a lot for your helpful comment.
Posted by Soo Hee Lee | August 9, 2012, 5:56 amWearable space is a great idea, and this is a very interesting paper. One point theoretically I would make is to check the history of the term ‘bricolage’. I think if you look at Derrida’s work (a primary rather than a secondary source) you might see how elements of the ‘imaginary’ and the ‘real’ could be assembled by users of wearable spaces and incorporated together ‘on the fly’.
Posted by Rodney Clarke | July 31, 2012, 12:05 amHi Rodney,
Thanks for your helpful comment.
Yes, we’d like to elaborate on bricolarge but we had space constraint.
We will incorporate Levi-Strauss and Derrida’s conceptions later.
Soo Hee
Posted by Soo Hee Lee | August 9, 2012, 5:59 amA very interesting idea. I think the paper could be made more accessible to a wider audience by including a few examples. Maybe some wearable technologies that the authors themselves have worn, what they did and what it felt like. Also when wearing such devices felt appropriate and inappropriate, fun or embarrassing, etc. Such auto-ethnographies can be really handy in the early stages of a technology use.
Posted by Michael Bernard Twidale | August 2, 2012, 1:26 amDear Michael,
Thank you for your kind comments.
Yes, examples/ illustrations would be useful.
We will incorporate them in the full version of the paper.
Auto-ethnographies sounds interesting (maybe embarrasing).
When Yikyung Kim (co-author) develops some prototypes, we will try user experience testing.
Soo Hee
Posted by Soo Hee Lee | August 9, 2012, 6:02 amThis is a fascinating area of work, and one that is still underexplored, as the authors point out.
It might be useful to clarify and discuss the read/write, and private/public nature of interfaces in public spaces. This would be closely connected to the context and situation of use. Some tangible examples would be helpful to this discussion. Creative, artistic and entertainment applications will be treated very differently – from an interaction perspective – to health and practical task-based applications. There are design issues too around the differing timescales here. Physical architecture takes a long time to plan and build, whereas clothing and fashion are much more ephemeral – how can we connect the two in a useful way?
Posted by ingihelgason | August 2, 2012, 6:48 amHi, Ingihelson,
Thank you for your helpful comments.
Yes, I agree that the contextual and situational factors are very important.
We are thinking of more concrete contexts to apply this notion of wearable space (e.g, in performance, exhibition and urban public space). As David mentioned above, capturing user responses/ experience would be necessary.
Different time scales for architecture and fashion as well as their rigid versus ephemeral nature would add another point of discussion. But i think they could be complementary rather than oppositional in that wearables could enhance interactivity of architectural constructs when both of them are wired and mediatised.
Posted by Soo Hee Lee | August 9, 2012, 6:11 am