The Undertable: A Design Remake of the Mediated Body
Paper in proceeding, 2024

Tables are a ubiquitous piece of furniture, a familiar sight in most environments from intimate to public. The dimensions of social interplay surrounding every single table are profoundly complex. In our project, we lift the importance of the neglected space under the table through the playful development of a tangible prototype. We approached this by a design remake of the Mediated Body: a wearable prototype encouraging touch between strangers using the conductivity of the skin. Instead, we leverage the familiarity of tables as a means to encourage playful explorations of bare-skin touch. We report in visual and textual form on the emerging design knowledge throughout our design process, including frst-person narratives by the designers. We contribute with (1) a series of counterfactual table artifacts inspired by the Mediated Body; (2) a sequence of participant studies analysed through refexive thematic analysis and summarised into the notion of “an odd invitation” as a new lens for homo explorens; and (3) an appeal to the importance of design remakes for research-through-design.

Research-through-Design

Ludic Design

Defamiliarisation

Emergence

Homo Explorens

Design Case

Design Remake

Author

Sjoerd Hendriks

Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Interaction Design and Software Engineering

Mafalda Samuelsson-Gamboa

Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Interaction Design and Software Engineering

Mohammad Obaid

Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Interaction Design and Software Engineering

Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, DIS 2024

2591-2610
9798400705830 (ISBN)

2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, DIS 2024
Copenhagen, Denmark,

Access Table: Accessible Collaboration around Configurable Displays

Swedish Research Council (VR) (2020-04918), 2021-01-01 -- 2024-12-31.

Subject Categories

Design

Communication Studies

Human Computer Interaction

DOI

10.1145/3643834.3660698

More information

Latest update

8/13/2024