Teaching Embodied Interaction Design Practice

Abstract
Increasingly, user experiences are addressing our interactions in the world—the physical, the social, and the situated. This sketch presents our experiences introducing embodied interaction themes to a project-based Interaction Design studio course. We present and discuss examples of student-created designs, illustrating the relationship between these design methods, domains, and artifacts created. These in-the-world domains and methods appealed to budding interaction designers because it encouraged them to transcend the computer screen and design for the world at large. However, the challenge of effectively evaluating in-the-world interactions inhibited iteration. Balancing obser-vation, craft, and evaluation was critical to project success, and we are exploring how to help students navigate these process tradeoffs.

Keywords
Interaction design, studio, education, teaching, embodied interaction, urban computing, tangible UI.

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First presented at the conference on Designing for User eXperience, November 3-5, 2005, San Francisco, CA