From Interaction to Participation: Configuring Space through Embodied Interaction

Williams, A., Kabisch, E., and Dourish, P. (2005.) From Interaction to Participation: Configuring Space through Embodied Interaction. Proc. Intl. Conf. Ubiquitous Computing Ubicomp 2005 (Tokyo, Japan).

This paper explores the question of how will people encounter and understand ubiquitous environments (new space), and how will they interact with each each other through the augmented capabilities of ubicomp technologies of such environments (i.e. the reconfiguration of the relationship between people, objects and space). The fundamental concern is with the ways in which we encounter space not simply as a container for our actions, but as a setting within which we act (embodied nature of activity). The spatial organization of activities goes beyond simply space and action. Rather, it speaks to first the mutual configuration of arrangements of bodies, artifacts and activities, and second, the social and cultural practices by which actions are both produced and interpreted.

Traditional focus of HCI is on how people might interact with technologies. The author take an other approach on looking at how people engage with space and with each other through the technologies that are provided to them. Rather than focusing on the interaction, they focus on the participation. In the same time, we think and talk about ubiquitous computing systems with a primer focus on technologies and less on the space that those technology occupy. From their experience, the authors notes some broad observations:

• People sought to understand the system not as a whole but in terms of the individual actions of different components
• We currently lack of good design approaches for understanding the temporal aspects of technologies.
• Ubiquitous computing technologies are ones through which people encounter and come to understand infrastructures. The presence or absence of infrastructure, or difference in its availability, become one of the way in which spaces are understood and navigated (e.g. the strength of a cellular telephone signal becomes an important aspect of how space is assessed and used).

Relation to my thesis: My thesis may contain a phenomenological perspective of how will people be able to make sense of computationally enhances spaces, and how will people be able to make sense of each other in the spaces. So far, I have noticed in Catchbob! the impact of a fluctuant link between the infrastructure based on ubicomp technologies and the activities due to the fluctuant network coverage and consistency (hurting (changing?) the communication) and spatial uncertainty. The infrastructure has an impact on the way we encounter space. This is Dourish’s “embodies interaction” paradigm. That is how technologies and artifacts take on meaning for their users through their embedding into systems of practice. Well, I shall read Where The Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction to really grasp what embodied interaction really is.