Body storming

Oulasvirta, A., Kurvinen, E., & Kankainen, T. (2003). “Understanding contexts by being there: case studies in bodystorming". In Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 7(2), 125­-134.

14.03.2022

Notes:

• Bodystorming is, essentially, simply brainstorming conducted ‘in the wild’.
• A location is selected that is identical or similar to the original environment. Innovation, carried out on-site, is based on ethnographical data presented as concrete design questions.
• We found that bodystorming permits immediate feedback for generateddesign ideas, and can provide a more accurate understanding of contextual factors.
• It is best suitable for designing for activities that are accessible and unfamiliar to the researchers.
• Mark Weiser
• Early research in context-awareness can be characterized as an attempt in finding universal context attributes that would be needed for many (or all) ubiquitous computing applications (exanple: location and time).
• The overarching goal in the design of any ubiquitous computing application is, then, to discover the specific physical, social, interactional, and/or psychological contextual factors that are important in making the flow of human-computer interaction natural.
• A variety of user-centered design process models have been proposed for this purpose. All models subsume following three stages: (1) observation of user activities; (2) documentation of the observations; and (3) design based on the documentation
• Before a bodystorming session, apreliminary observation and documentation is conducted. From the documents, interesting phenomena are selected and edited into easily readable design questions
• In the paper they argue that bodystorming can reduce the amount of time needed to study documents of user observations and it can enhance the accuracy of conceptionsof the problem domain
• Kelley and Littman suggest seven habits forsuccessful brainstorming: (1) sharpening the focus, (2) not critiquing emerged ideas, (3) indexing invented ideas, (4) monitoring different stages of ‘jumping and building’ during brainstorming, (5) externalizing ideas. for others to see, (6) doing mental exercises to ‘warm up’ the brainstorming group, and (7) getting physical by bringing real material to the brainstorming session or by situating brainstorming physically.
• Three important factors considered in the case studies are (1) the richness of information given toparticipants, (2) the potential benefit of acting on-site, and (3) the degree of similarity of the bodystorming environment to the studied environment.
• Other three important factors (1) Similarity of the bodystorming environment to thestudied environment, (2) Acting out was observed to be frustrating and causing costly preparations, (3) Inclusion of stories from user data to accompany design questions.
• To summarise, bodystorming should be seen as a way of working (and playing) with data in embodied ways, ‘being there’.

Cultural probes