The Beauty Of Interaction
CC Attribution - ShareAlike 3.0 Germany:
You are free to use, adapt and copy, distribute and transmit the work or content in adapted or unchanged form for any legal purpose as long as the work is attributed to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor and the work or content is shared also in adapted form only under the conditions of this
Marti, Patrizia
In our everyday living we inhabit complex technological spheres of life that require a novel and more 'ecological' understanding of our relationship to technology. New kinds of pervasive sensor-based and embedded technologies entail a very different understanding than traditional user interface design activities. People are confronted with new demands and increasingly complex technological infrastructures and ecologies. As designers we strive to manage such complexity and to develop systems that seduce our senses. As ordinary people we would like to get rid of such complexity and interact in the digital world with rich interaction possibilities as we do so well in the physical world, using our intuition, motivation and enchantment towards objects. The challenge is how to exploit this complexity and new possibilities for novel applications and experiences, which are inviting, witty and playful, original and fascinating, and last but not least, improve life and people on an individual or societal basis. The Aesthetics of Interaction will be the focus of the talk. Design cases will be presented to challenge the approach in different fields of application, from everyday life objects to the health care and rehabilitation domain.
 Good afternoon. I'm Patricia from University of Siena in Italy. Before starting my talk, I would like to say just a few words about my university and my department. We started in 1992 and in Italy, my department, it is communication science, was quite an experiment at that time because we decided to mix people from communication, psychology, technology, design, and so engineering and we work all together, so still work all together and I will show you some of the results of our work, of our projects. But for me, it's important to say that this multidisciplinary is a value for us, so we really want to mix and to share and to exchange and I'm available to do this for you today, so even after my talk, if you want any information, I'm very happy to stay here with you. So the title of my talk is Beauty of Interaction. So I will try to say something about beauty, what is beauty for me and before starting, I would like to say that this work is, was started a few years ago in collaboration with other groups in particular to explain what beauty is, beauty and interaction is for me. I would like to start quoting Kei Soverbeke who was professor at the Technical University in Soven and very sadly passed away a few months ago but I'm very happy to share with you the work that I did with him and this is also a way to continue his dreams and his activity. So speaking about beauty and interaction, Kei's was used to say that design is about people, is about our way of living, our hopes, our dreams, our loneliness and joy, our sense of beauty and justice, it's about the social and the good, it's about being in the world and in this context it's a very poetic approach to the design of interactive technologies. We were and we still are convinced that meaning is in action, meaning is in interaction, it's not that we find something that we can find in the world, that's something that we can teach to our students, it's something that we construct together. So this is the main vision of this talk and the approach and instead of explaining this in words I would like to start with two videos and these videos will be commented just afterwards. So this is a lamp, an interactive lamp that was designed by a PhD students at the Technical University, Eindhoven and this is Philips Rose and you see the lamp, you don't see any switch and the lamp just invites you to explore, to touch, to stroke and sometimes the lamp doesn't know exactly what to do so it has to be in a sense reassured about what to do, where to direct the light. And you will see in a while there are different ways of interacting with this lamp. Mainly stroking and the material of this lamp is extremely pleasurable to stroke and to touch. So it's a learning process, the lamp and the user are interactive to learn user preferences so what is really needed at that time to have a good experience of reading. And now let me show another one, another lamp again, this is another student project, this is a master project. This is a different kind of lamp, again, you interact with the lamp, there are no switches around and you try to adapt the way to use it. But then you see sometimes the lamp doesn't want to collaborate at all so maybe you have to try again and try to convince. No, there is no way. Okay, so why people should buy a lamp like this, a lamp that maybe doesn't do what is expected to do. And the reason for this, I thought that this was a good example for this concept of beauty of interaction because these lamps are about opening their functionality to the action of the user, they are about exploring, they are about trying things. So they are open to our perceptual motor skills. But they are also about reading and they are also about feeling good about beauty, reading a good book maybe. So they are about emotional skills. As I said, they are about reading, so the cognitive is there. And there are also about values, values are personal but values are social, so they are about social skills. And this is what beauty of interaction is about, is a combination of these. And these lamps are physical hypotheses that show what is the value behind design for beauty in interaction. And this is something that we try to teach to our students. And so I want to show you other videos and other projects from the students. But before having a look at these videos, I would like to say that having the beauty in mind means that the designers have to create a context for an experience first of all. And so they don't have just to design a good product. They have to offer a context to enjoy whatever, a film or to work, sharing, staying together. But it is important to do this in a beautiful way. So using all our skills in a very natural way. And it is important that technology is embodied. So we use our body to interact with interactive technologies. And first of all, it is important that technology is experiential and respectful. Let me explain what I mean by respectful. And try to imagine this situation. You are in a shop. And the shop assistant threw the biscuit at your feet, just doing this. And you bent down and you began to pick up the crumbs. And after some fiddling, you managed to get your change out of his fist. So could you ever accept a behavior like this in a shop? Never, of course. But this is exactly what we accept when we use a vending machine. When we use a vending machine, we insert coins and sometimes we have to take the bottles doing something like that, put our hands in dirty holes. And, okay, I have quite an example of really an acceptable vending machine that we use every day. So starting from this example, we asked our students to design new vending machines having beauty in mind. And this is what they did. So So first of all, the vending machine tries to attract your attention, the machine that can't follow the movement of the person. And then also they were very much focused on the way in which the machine opened, because this is something that is really bad sometimes with some vending machines. And again, everything, also the gestures are extremely natural. I want that. I don't have to type numbers, for example, because typing is, of course, something that can lead to errors. And again, you can waste your money and so on and so forth. But the way in which the experience was reinterpreted by the students was quite interesting to see. And then there were, of course, other examples of you couldn't call these vending machines, but let me show what they tried. They tried to have a kind of expressive interaction with the machine that tries to give you something. And the first example is a machine that is a bit nervous and maybe scared about your touch. So the machine doesn't know exactly what to do, but at the end it gives the small nuts. And the other one is very poetic and beautiful. This is the second one. So, the second one is strange. It's not very convinced, so. So there is a way of having expressive technologies and a very simple, natural way to interact with such technologies. And everything should be extremely embodied, so we don't need necessarily interfaces that we design just to interact with the technologies. We can use our body and we can use the environment as it is possible to see from this example. This was another project from a master student who designed this system to listen to music. A little update about the technology that working with software. They used to fit up on the same old broken mind You picked you So, this is the context of of the work that I'm doing at the University of Siena. And these are some of the examples from the students' project. But what I'm trying to do now is to try to challenge this approach in different domains. And one of these, an extremely challenging domain for applying the beauty of interaction, is the health care. So the rehabilitation and care in general. So what is beauty in therapy and care? To me, this is really the experience of use that lead to a feeling of engagement and also to the hope of the recovery. We all know that when doing rehabilitation, for example, physical rehabilitation, is extremely boring. You have your problem and you have to repeat again and again the same movement. And people don't want to do this. And in particular, children don't want to do this. They get bored and that's it. And so why don't we try to make also rehabilitation a beautiful experience and engaging experience? The other point is that rehabilitation tools manifest disability. They are awful. Awful to wear, awful to touch. And they immediately manifest disability. So is there anything that we can do to avoid this? Is there anything to make them playful, engaging, surprising, nice to use, beautiful to use? And the other point to me that is very important is that rehabilitation usually focuses on impaired perceptual motor skills. And so what I'm trying to do is to recombine the other skills that are still intact in people who have, for example, physical or cognitive problems, and then to use them in combination without focusing on the disability itself. So this is the context. And when I try this work, few... Sorry, it is not easy to read the first question. But the question was, it is possible to design with... To have an aesthetically-minded design to develop rehabilitation tools. And yeah, there are some attempts. These are nice examples that I saw that I found on internet. And the first one, these are crutches that are made by ceramic. They are very nice to wear and to touch. They are very elegant. And these are other examples of these kind of tools that are, like, a bit fashion. But to me, what is important here is that the beauty is not only in appearance. The beauty is in interaction. So how can we design rehabilitation tools that are pleasurable to use? I started a few years ago, as I said, with this topic that I explored in different projects. In particular, I used... And I'm still using robots for autistic children, for example, for elderly people, and other kind of interactive tools. I will show you some examples of this. And this is the first example. I worked for a few, I would say, a couple of years in home care with elderly people, and in particular for people affected by dementia. And the problem they have, in particular, is isolation. It's the isolation. They don't communicate very much. They sit most of the day waiting for lunch and dinner, mainly. And that's it. And it's extremely difficult for them to get in contact with other people, to communicate with other people, because the language is impaired. And so, since they, in some way, realize this, they refuse to communicate with other people. So I had a team at that time that was... It was an international team of designers, and we started this project, and we developed what we call the rolling pins. They are cylinders, plastic tubes, mainly, that can communicate with each other. And they can produce different kind of feedbacks, sounds, lights, and vibrations. And what is interesting is that the system, that these rolling pins are used in two or three people, at least. So when you shake or you roll one of your rolling pins, that is a cylinder like this, the output of your action is reflected on the other pins. And whenever the two person make exactly the same kind of movement, the pins vibrate. So this means that you can perceive the perception of the other person. And when you tune each other, when the person tune each other, you can feel that you are doing exactly the same. And for the therapist, this is quite important when you are able to tune with another person, because this means that you are able to read the mind of another person. And this is something that people with dementia cannot do. So this is... Let me show you the system, how it works. Oops. Let's go again. Okay, so I tried this system with elderly people in this home care. And we did an experiment. We divided the people in two groups, and one group worked or tried the system in a condition where the two rolling pins didn't communicate each other, and the other group worked with the system in the condition where the rolling pin communicated each other. So this means that the person could feel the perception of the other one, so making the same kind of movement. And you can see the results of the... On the right, you have the therapist. And this is the first condition when the rolling pins don't communicate each other. You see, the person doesn't do anything, she refuses to put her hands on the rolling pin. But this is the condition in which the rolling pin communicates with the person. There's very little T faith in anyone, there's no T faith in anyone, and you can see how the person communicates with the whole system... One person doesn't communicate So, we analyzed all these videos with the therapist and the doctors. And what is interesting to see is that they interpreted the different movements, the choreographies of movement in a very specific way. They said that this is a kind of non-verbal dialogue where you express a kind of relaxation when you do something like that. So it's a very easy movement or anxiety and effort when they did the rotations. So, it was a way to communicate with the therapist about their internal states. And again, you can see here a combination of sensory motor skills and perceptual skills and visual and cognitive skills and social skills. So it's really a way to get in touch and to try to also to involve in the activity skills that usually are not very much practiced by these persons. So this system was really successful. It is still in use in this home care in the north of Italy. This is another example. It's another system for children with cognitive and physical disabilities. The system is called active surfaces. And the idea here and the beauty here was to work in the water because the water is really a fantastic context for the rehabilitation. In water, even people with physical disabilities can move autonomously. So children with physical disabilities can play with other children. They don't need any other support, they can move. And also children with cognitive disabilities can be, can play in this kind of environment because the water is extremely relaxing. So it helps to maintain the focus of attention during the activity. And so before this, before the system was developed and tried out in a real context, I asked my student to think about, to develop concepts of these kind of systems, having this idea of the beauty of interaction in mind. And you can see what they did and the very sophisticated techniques that we use for prototyping ideas. And we usedsudden transitions when we applied the Cute future systems for. This bird oferture incident as that. You are my angel You are my angel Dave! You think you're gonna save another girl Dave has a few photos And I can love you You talk to this girl You feel the end of the time You're hot I like to dream about you Like in my dark Every man is alone But I don't want you Don't be where you go Because I love you I don't want to love you No Dave You're hot I like to dream about you You got to believe You believe Dave You're hot I like to dream about you Like in my dark Every man is alone But I don't want you Don't be where you go Because I love you And I don't want to love you No Never want to love you Never Never never ever Won't love you And I feel you All my angel And she gets to love you So, it's just the pain So, it's just the pain You know? This is more or less the way in which we prototype ideas and we work with the doctors and the therapist It's extremely easy to develop concepts and to show to the people in a final system. And it was developed in the form of floating files instead of working on the floor of the swimming pool. And again, there are modules. There are tiles that communicate each other. And you can do different kinds of games, like the Scrabble games or Sequence games or matching colors and these kind of things. When you put the tiles in the right sequence, the configuration at the end lights up. So again, this is an example of combination of physical and cognitive skills. And also, children really love to play these kind of games. And it is a way to continue the therapy. Again, this is still in use in Siena, in a swimming pool in Siena. The second context in which I'm trying to challenge the idea of beauty of interaction is education. And of course, this is extremely important for us, because if you don't train people in designing with this idea, you don't have prototypes and system to try out. And there is no way to have a societal impact if you don't develop system like that. So to see if this idea of beauty of interaction can really have an impact on the society. And this is an example of a project that we did last year. It was a module. It was a design school, an international design school that was called Light Through Culture. And the idea was to wave technologies, light technologies, and to introduce them in a very rich cultural context. With the idea to learn together how to use light technologies to express meanings about history. And we didn't do the module at the university, but we did the module in a museum in Siena. That is a special place, because it was an hospital. And now it is a museum. It's a very big building. And we gave them a very difficult design brief. So we actually asked them to design an experiential route, trying to explore the fact that this museum is built on the Via Francigena. Via Francigena is a pilgrimage route that was used by pilgrims from France and UK to go to Rome. And Siena was one of the places where the pilgrims stopped and to rest a bit and then to continue their path toward Rome. And so the questions that we asked the student to respond were, are the tourists the new pilgrims? What they look for when they start a pilgrimage like this? Do they look for hope, for silence, for enlightenment? So again, it was a very poetic way of thinking about the history of this place. So as I said, we asked them to design this experiential route. And we tried to address their craftsmanship and their different cultural and educational background. We had six students from Eindhoven and six students from Siena with different backgrounds. And they took the full responsibility to design this path. And the school was organized in three phases, mainly. The first phase was about opening sensitivities. So we asked them to go around and to be inspired about the space, so about the smell, the gloom, the darkness. Just really stay there. The module lasted two weeks. And in two weeks, they had to design and develop the installation. And then we opened the exhibition to the public. And then they studied about, part of the module was dedicated to the history of the place. And then the students split in groups. And they started making, just playing with technologies, like technologies, and tried to see how to use arduino boards and sensors and actuators to build different installations. And the third phase was about the reflection, so opening the exhibition to the public and trying to involve visitors in discussions about what they visited, what they understood, which kind of experience they had from visiting the museum. And they did actually quite a good work. This is the path in the museum. So there were five different installations in the space. And I want to show the first one, that is this one, 0.0. And this is the introduction to the space. Who are, in this day and age, the new pilgrims? Are they the tourists? What are the insights? And what are the discoveries that could be made along the way? Enlightenment? Hope? Silence? Our story takes you on a personal pilgrimage through life. We came from the north on our way to Rome and finally reached Siena, on the way we got to know other pilgrims. And we are now sharing the difficulties of our journey through four spaces. So this is the first space that is quite interesting space. This was the morgue of the old hospital. And when people died, they stayed there for 24 hours before dispensing the blessing. And since there were no scientific instruments to establish the death with certainty, the doctors were used to put a bell attached to the ankle of the corpses. So if in 24 hours they didn't see any sound, people were dead. And this was the way in which they treated people. And this is the interpretation of the students of this space that was called the Room of Uncertain Death. It is called like that. So So the space is fully interactive and also the next one that is called the washing facility of the wet nurses. This is a washing facility that dates back to the medieval age and the water were collected in these basins, this washing facility and were used by the wet nurses to wash the clothes of the orphans that were hosted in this place. And the students interpreted this space in this way. So this is one of the corridors. They simulate the water leaking from the walls with the light. And this is, they simulated the water inside the washing facility with a smoke machine and everything is interactive. So the idea is that if you pretend to wash clothes, then when the clothes are cleaned, the water changes the color. So they reproduce also the sound of the space. So if you are interested in having a look at the video of the whole exhibition, the video is accessible there. And I want to finish my presentation going back to the vision of this work. And as I said, this was basically the idea of working with the beauty of interaction came from exploring and trying to develop a theoretical framework. And then now, after a few years, is something that we are really using and challenging in specific application domains. And the ambition is to create in our labs, in our universities, an innovation space where creativity can meld with research and development. And also as a way to develop new methodologies to teach and to learn and to design to understand human activity in the world. So this is really the vision. And there are some central themes. I'm sorry you cannot read this, but first of all, the focus of our work is the human activity. We don't work in the lab. We work in the real context of use. Sometimes the context are also quite challenging, working in the hospitals, in the schools, with people with different problems also in their life. Everything is, all the technologies are really embodied. The interaction is embodied. The interaction is extremely natural without any kind of interface rather than the body and the environment. Engagement is a key word. So we want to engage people. We want to create space for opportunities and for experiences for them. And interaction is the key point. So we see interaction as a narrative activity where people can put their meaning inside. And interaction is multi-modal in the sense that it has to incorporate several sensory modalities. And technology here is interpreted as augmentation. So we don't want to view technology as a way to model us and to understand our needs, but we want to develop these needs and the support in interaction, during the interaction. So the very closing slide of my talk is this one. I really like this piece from Masaito and Morey, and I would like to read this with you to close my speech. And he says that an individual's overall capacity to judge things changes completely depending on whether he possesses a sense of pathos of things, sensitivity to beauty, and compassionate empathy. These things change once we're calibrated as human beings. And this is the reason why we believe that design can really help in trying to compose this view and this framework. And I hope that we can also try with our students to bring this idea of the beauty of interaction in their design, for developing their design skills. Thank you very much for your attention.
 Good afternoon. I'm Patricia from University of Siena in Italy.  Before starting my talk, I would like to say just a few words about my university and my  department. We started in 1992 and in Italy, my department, it is communication science,  was quite an experiment at that time because we decided to mix people from communication,  psychology, technology, design, and so engineering and we work all together, so still work all  together and I will show you some of the results of our work, of our projects. But for me, it's  important to say that this multidisciplinary is a value for us, so we really want to mix and to  share and to exchange and I'm available to do this for you today, so even after my talk,  if you want any information, I'm very happy to stay here with you. So the title of my talk is  Beauty of Interaction. So I will try to say something about beauty, what is beauty for me  and before starting, I would like to say that this work is, was started a few years ago in  collaboration with other groups in particular to explain what beauty is, beauty and interaction is  for me. I would like to start quoting Kei Soverbeke who was professor at the Technical  University in Soven and very sadly passed away a few months ago but I'm very happy to share with  you the work that I did with him and this is also a way to continue his dreams and his activity.  So speaking about beauty and interaction, Kei's was used to say that design is about people,  is about our way of living, our hopes, our dreams, our loneliness and joy, our sense of beauty and  justice, it's about the social and the good, it's about being in the world and in this context it's  a very poetic approach to the design of interactive technologies. We were and we still are convinced  that meaning is in action, meaning is in interaction, it's not that we find something that we can find  in the world, that's something that we can teach to our students, it's something that we construct  together. So this is the main vision of this talk and the approach and instead of explaining this  in words I would like to start with two videos and these videos will be commented just afterwards.  So this is a lamp, an interactive lamp that was designed by a PhD students at the Technical  University, Eindhoven and this is Philips Rose and you see the lamp, you don't see any switch and  the lamp just invites you to explore, to touch, to stroke and sometimes the lamp doesn't know  exactly what to do so it has to be in a sense reassured about what to do, where to direct the  light. And you will see in a while there are different ways of interacting with this lamp.  Mainly stroking and the material of this lamp is extremely pleasurable to stroke and to touch.  So it's a learning process, the lamp and the user are interactive to learn user preferences so  what is really needed at that time to have a good experience of reading. And now let me show  another one, another lamp again, this is another student project, this is a master project. This  is a different kind of lamp, again, you interact with the lamp, there are no switches around  and you try to adapt the way to use it. But then you see sometimes the lamp doesn't want  to collaborate at all so maybe you have to try again and try to convince. No, there is  no way. Okay, so why people should buy a lamp like this, a lamp that maybe doesn't do what  is expected to do. And the reason for this, I thought that this was a good example for  this concept of beauty of interaction because these lamps are about opening their functionality  to the action of the user, they are about exploring, they are about trying things. So  they are open to our perceptual motor skills. But they are also about reading and they are  also about feeling good about beauty, reading a good book maybe. So they are about emotional  skills. As I said, they are about reading, so the cognitive is there. And there are also  about values, values are personal but values are social, so they are about social skills.  And this is what beauty of interaction is about, is a combination of these. And these  lamps are physical hypotheses that show what is the value behind design for beauty in interaction.  And this is something that we try to teach to our students. And so I want to show you  other videos and other projects from the students. But before having a look at these videos, I  would like to say that having the beauty in mind means that the designers have to create  a context for an experience first of all. And so they don't have just to design a good  product. They have to offer a context to enjoy whatever, a film or to work, sharing, staying  together. But it is important to do this in a beautiful way. So using all our skills in  a very natural way. And it is important that technology is embodied. So we use our body  to interact with interactive technologies. And first of all, it is important that technology  is experiential and respectful. Let me explain what I mean by respectful. And try to imagine  this situation. You are in a shop. And the shop assistant threw the biscuit at your feet,  just doing this. And you bent down and you began to pick up the crumbs. And after some  fiddling, you managed to get your change out of his fist. So could you ever accept a behavior  like this in a shop? Never, of course. But this is exactly what we accept when we use  a vending machine. When we use a vending machine, we insert coins and sometimes we have to take  the bottles doing something like that, put our hands in dirty holes. And, okay, I have  quite an example of really an acceptable vending machine that we use every day. So starting  from this example, we asked our students to design new vending machines having beauty  in mind. And this is what they did.  So  So first of all, the vending machine tries to attract your attention, the machine that  can't follow the movement of the person.  And then also they were very much focused on the way in which the machine opened, because  this is something that is really bad sometimes with some vending machines.  And again, everything, also the gestures are extremely natural.  I want that.  I don't have to type numbers, for example, because typing is, of course, something that  can lead to errors.  And again, you can waste your money and so on and so forth.  But the way in which the experience was reinterpreted by the students was quite interesting to see.  And then there were, of course, other examples of you couldn't call these vending machines,  but let me show what they tried.  They tried to have a kind of expressive interaction with the machine that tries to give you something.  And the first example is a machine that is a bit nervous and maybe scared about your touch.  So the machine doesn't know exactly what to do, but at the end it gives the small nuts.  And the other one is very poetic and beautiful.  This is the second one.  So, the second one is strange.  It's not very convinced, so.  So there is a way of having expressive technologies and a very simple, natural way to interact  with such technologies.  And everything should be extremely embodied, so we don't need necessarily interfaces that  we design just to interact with the technologies.  We can use our body and we can use the environment as it is possible to see from this example.  This was another project from a master student who designed this system to listen to music.  A little update about the technology that working with software.  They used to fit up on the same old broken mind  You picked you  So, this is the  context of  of the work that I'm doing at the University of Siena.  And these are some of the examples from the students' project.  But what I'm trying to do now is to try to challenge this approach  in different domains.  And one of these, an extremely challenging domain  for applying the beauty of interaction, is the health care.  So the rehabilitation and care in general.  So what is beauty in therapy and care?  To me, this is really the experience of use  that lead to a feeling of engagement  and also to the hope of the recovery.  We all know that when doing rehabilitation, for example,  physical rehabilitation, is extremely boring.  You have your problem and you have to repeat again  and again the same movement.  And people don't want to do this.  And in particular, children don't want to do this.  They get bored and that's it.  And so why don't we try to make also rehabilitation  a beautiful experience and engaging experience?  The other point is that rehabilitation tools  manifest disability.  They are awful.  Awful to wear, awful to touch.  And they immediately manifest disability.  So is there anything that we can do to avoid this?  Is there anything to make them playful, engaging, surprising,  nice to use, beautiful to use?  And the other point to me that is very important  is that rehabilitation usually focuses  on impaired perceptual motor skills.  And so what I'm trying to do is to recombine the other skills  that are still intact in people who have, for example,  physical or cognitive problems, and then to use them  in combination without focusing on the disability itself.  So this is the context.  And when I try this work, few...  Sorry, it is not easy to read the first question.  But the question was, it is possible to design with...  To have an aesthetically-minded design  to develop rehabilitation tools.  And yeah, there are some attempts.  These are nice examples that I saw that I found on internet.  And the first one, these are crutches that are made by ceramic.  They are very nice to wear and to touch.  They are very elegant.  And these are other examples of these kind of tools  that are, like, a bit fashion.  But to me, what is important here is that the beauty  is not only in appearance.  The beauty is in interaction.  So how can we design rehabilitation tools  that are pleasurable to use?  I started a few years ago, as I said, with this topic  that I explored in different projects.  In particular, I used...  And I'm still using robots for autistic children,  for example, for elderly people,  and other kind of interactive tools.  I will show you some examples of this.  And this is the first example.  I worked for a few, I would say, a couple of years  in home care with elderly people,  and in particular for people affected by dementia.  And the problem they have, in particular, is isolation.  It's the isolation.  They don't communicate very much.  They sit most of the day waiting for lunch and dinner, mainly.  And that's it.  And it's extremely difficult for them to get in contact  with other people, to communicate with other people,  because the language is impaired.  And so, since they, in some way, realize this,  they refuse to communicate with other people.  So I had a team at that time that was...  It was an international team of designers,  and we started this project,  and we developed what we call the rolling pins.  They are cylinders, plastic tubes,  mainly, that can communicate with each other.  And they can produce different kind of feedbacks,  sounds, lights, and vibrations.  And what is interesting is that the system,  that these rolling pins are used in two or three people, at least.  So when you shake or you roll one of your rolling pins,  that is a cylinder like this,  the output of your action is reflected on the other pins.  And whenever the two person make exactly the same kind of movement,  the pins vibrate.  So this means that you can perceive the perception of the other person.  And when you tune each other, when the person tune each other,  you can feel that you are doing exactly the same.  And for the therapist, this is quite important  when you are able to tune with another person,  because this means that you are able to read the mind of another person.  And this is something that people with dementia cannot do.  So this is... Let me show you the system, how it works.  Oops.  Let's go again.  Okay, so I tried this system with elderly people in this home care.  And we did an experiment.  We divided the people in two groups,  and one group worked or tried the system  in a condition where the two rolling pins didn't communicate each other,  and the other group worked with the system  in the condition where the rolling pin communicated each other.  So this means that the person could feel the perception of the other one,  so making the same kind of movement.  And you can see the results of the...  On the right, you have the therapist.  And this is the first condition when the rolling pins don't communicate each other.  You see, the person doesn't do anything,  she refuses to put her hands on the rolling pin.  But this is the condition in which the rolling pin communicates with the person.  There's very little T faith in anyone,  there's no T faith in anyone,  and you can see how the person communicates with the whole system...  One person doesn't communicate  So, we analyzed all these videos with the therapist and the doctors.  And what is interesting to see is that they interpreted the different movements, the choreographies  of movement in a very specific way.  They said that this is a kind of non-verbal dialogue where you express a kind of relaxation  when you do something like that.  So it's a very easy movement or anxiety and effort when they did the rotations.  So, it was a way to communicate with the therapist about their internal states.  And again, you can see here a combination of sensory motor skills and perceptual skills  and visual and cognitive skills and social skills.  So it's really a way to get in touch and to try to also to involve in the activity skills  that usually are not very much practiced by these persons.  So this system was really successful.  It is still in use in this home care in the north of Italy.  This is another example.  It's another system for children with cognitive and physical disabilities.  The system is called active surfaces.  And the idea here and the beauty here was to work in the water because the water is really  a fantastic context for the rehabilitation.  In water, even people with physical disabilities can move autonomously.  So children with physical disabilities can play with other children.  They don't need any other support, they can move.  And also children with cognitive disabilities can be, can play in this kind of environment  because the water is extremely relaxing.  So it helps to maintain the focus of attention during the activity.  And so before this, before the system was developed and tried out in a real context,  I asked my student to think about, to develop concepts of these kind of systems, having  this idea of the beauty of interaction in mind.  And you can see what they did and the very sophisticated techniques that we use for prototyping  ideas.  And we usedsudden transitions when we applied the Cute future systems for.  This bird oferture incident as that.  You are my angel  You are my angel  Dave!  You think you're gonna save another girl  Dave has a few photos  And I can love you  You talk to this girl  You feel the end of the time  You're hot  I like to dream about you  Like in my dark  Every man is alone  But I don't want you  Don't be where you go  Because I love you  I don't want to love you  No  Dave  You're hot  I like to dream about you  You got to believe  You believe  Dave  You're hot  I like to dream about you  Like in my dark  Every man is alone  But I don't want you  Don't be where you go  Because I love you  And I don't want to love you  No  Never want to love you  Never  Never never ever  Won't love you  And I feel you  All my angel  And she gets to love you  So, it's just the pain  So, it's just the pain  You know?  This is more or less the way in which we prototype ideas  and we work with the doctors and the therapist  It's extremely easy to develop concepts  and to show to the people  in a final system.  And it was developed in the form of floating files  instead of working on the floor of the swimming pool.  And again, there are modules.  There are tiles that communicate each other.  And you can do different kinds of games,  like the Scrabble games or Sequence games or matching  colors and these kind of things.  When you put the tiles in the right sequence,  the configuration at the end lights up.  So again, this is an example of combination  of physical and cognitive skills.  And also, children really love to play these kind of games.  And it is a way to continue the therapy.  Again, this is still in use in Siena, in a swimming pool  in Siena.  The second context in which I'm trying to challenge  the idea of beauty of interaction is education.  And of course, this is extremely important for us,  because if you don't train people in designing with this idea,  you don't have prototypes and system to try out.  And there is no way to have a societal impact  if you don't develop system like that.  So to see if this idea of beauty of interaction  can really have an impact on the society.  And this is an example of a project that we did last year.  It was a module.  It was a design school, an international design school  that was called Light Through Culture.  And the idea was to wave technologies, light technologies,  and to introduce them in a very rich cultural context.  With the idea to learn together how  to use light technologies to express meanings about history.  And we didn't do the module at the university,  but we did the module in a museum in Siena.  That is a special place, because it was an hospital.  And now it is a museum.  It's a very big building.  And we gave them a very difficult design brief.  So we actually asked them to design an experiential route,  trying to explore the fact that this museum is  built on the Via Francigena.  Via Francigena is a pilgrimage route that  was used by pilgrims from France and UK  to go to Rome.  And Siena was one of the places where the pilgrims stopped  and to rest a bit and then to continue their path toward Rome.  And so the questions that we asked the student to respond  were, are the tourists the new pilgrims?  What they look for when they start a pilgrimage like this?  Do they look for hope, for silence, for enlightenment?  So again, it was a very poetic way  of thinking about the history of this place.  So as I said, we asked them to design this experiential route.  And we tried to address their craftsmanship  and their different cultural and educational background.  We had six students from Eindhoven and six students  from Siena with different backgrounds.  And they took the full responsibility to design this path.  And the school was organized in three phases, mainly.  The first phase was about opening sensitivities.  So we asked them to go around and to be inspired about the space,  so about the smell, the gloom, the darkness.  Just really stay there.  The module lasted two weeks.  And in two weeks, they had to design and develop  the installation.  And then we opened the exhibition to the public.  And then they studied about, part of the module  was dedicated to the history of the place.  And then the students split in groups.  And they started making, just playing with technologies,  like technologies, and tried to see  how to use arduino boards and sensors and actuators  to build different installations.  And the third phase was about the reflection, so opening  the exhibition to the public and trying  to involve visitors in discussions  about what they visited, what they understood,  which kind of experience they had from visiting the museum.  And they did actually quite a good work.  This is the path in the museum.  So there were five different installations in the space.  And I want to show the first one, that is this one, 0.0.  And this is the introduction to the space.  Who are, in this day and age, the new pilgrims?  Are they the tourists?  What are the insights?  And what are the discoveries that could be made along the way?  Enlightenment?  Hope?  Silence?  Our story takes you on a personal pilgrimage through life.  We came from the north on our way to Rome  and finally reached Siena, on the way we got to know other pilgrims.  And we are now sharing the difficulties of our journey  through four spaces.  So this is the first space that is quite interesting space.  This was the morgue of the old hospital.  And when people died, they stayed there for 24 hours  before dispensing the blessing.  And since there were no scientific instruments  to establish the death with certainty,  the doctors were used to put a bell attached to the ankle  of the corpses.  So if in 24 hours they didn't see any sound, people were dead.  And this was the way in which they treated people.  And this is the interpretation of the students  of this space that was called the Room of Uncertain Death.  It is called like that.  So  So the space is fully interactive and also the next one that is called the washing facility  of the wet nurses.  This is a washing facility that dates back to the medieval age and the water were collected  in these basins, this washing facility and were used by the wet nurses to wash the clothes  of the orphans that were hosted in this place.  And the students interpreted this space in this way.  So this is one of the corridors.  They simulate the water leaking from the walls with the light.  And this is, they simulated the water inside the washing facility with a smoke machine  and everything is interactive.  So the idea is that if you pretend to wash clothes, then when the clothes are cleaned,  the water changes the color.  So they reproduce also the sound of the space.  So if you are interested in having a look at the video of the whole exhibition, the video  is accessible there.  And I want to finish my presentation going back to the vision of this work.  And as I said, this was basically the idea of working with the beauty of interaction  came from exploring and trying to develop a theoretical framework.  And then now, after a few years, is something that we are really using and challenging in  specific application domains.  And the ambition is to create in our labs, in our universities, an innovation space where  creativity can meld with research and development.  And also as a way to develop new methodologies to teach and to learn and to design to understand  human activity in the world.  So this is really the vision.  And there are some central themes.  I'm sorry you cannot read this, but first of all, the focus of our work is the human activity.  We don't work in the lab.  We work in the real context of use.  Sometimes the context are also quite challenging, working in the hospitals, in the schools,  with people with different problems also in their life.  Everything is, all the technologies are really embodied.  The interaction is embodied.  The interaction is extremely natural without any kind of interface rather than the body  and the environment.  Engagement is a key word.  So we want to engage people.  We want to create space for opportunities and for experiences for them.  And interaction is the key point.  So we see interaction as a narrative activity where people can put their meaning inside.  And interaction is multi-modal in the sense that it has to incorporate several sensory  modalities.  And technology here is interpreted as augmentation.  So we don't want to view technology as a way to model us and to understand our needs, but  we want to develop these needs and the support in interaction, during the interaction.  So the very closing slide of my talk is this one.  I really like this piece from Masaito and Morey, and I would like to read this with you  to close my speech.  And he says that an individual's overall capacity to judge things changes completely  depending on whether he possesses a sense of pathos of things, sensitivity to beauty,  and compassionate empathy.  These things change once we're calibrated as human beings.  And this is the reason why we believe that design can really help in trying to compose  this view and this framework.  And I hope that we can also try with our students to bring this idea of the beauty of interaction  in their design, for developing their design skills.  Thank you very much for your attention.
re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__0_467.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__468_635.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__636_851.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__852_2603.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__2604_11423.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__11424_13367.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__13368_14687.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__14688_23855.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__23856_24131.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__24132_25367.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__25368_25475.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__25476_25559.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__25560_29435.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__29436_33191.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__33192_33875.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__33876_34751.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__34752_35603.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__35604_35723.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__35724_37571.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__37572_41615.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__41616_46295.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__46296_48767.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__48768_49691.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__49692_52067.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__52068_55199.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__55200_55439.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__55440_57731.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__57732_58199.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__58200_59327.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__59328_66539.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__66540_68759.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__68760_69119.png re_publica_2012_-_Patrizia_Marti_-_The_Beauty_Of_Interaction__720p_30fps_H264-152kbit_AAC__69120_72673.png