Research Publications Lab Teaching Bio Prospective students

Exploring Metaphor in Embodied Interaction

Funded by NSERC

Are tangible and whole body interfaces more natural and intuitive? Such claims rely on several premises. One premise is that leveraging metaphorical mappings between an image (embodied) schematic action and metaphorically related system response should improve performance and learning with such interfaces. The second premise suggests that learning a new system interface may be simplified by offloading memory from the purely cognitive realm to the realm of interactions between the body and environment. The body may remember where the mind does not. These three projects explore these and other premises of embodied interaction in tangible and interactive environments.

Design Guidance

• May, A. (2015).Eliciting User-Sourced Interaction Mappings for Body-Based Interfaces (Mater's Thesis, Simon Fraser University, Surrey, Canada).
• Macaranas, A. (2013). The Effects of Intuitive Interaction Mappings on the Usability of Body-based Interfaces (Master's Thesis, Simon Fraser University, Surrey, Canada). Retrieved from http://summit.sfu.ca/item/12635.
• Macaranas, A., Antle, A.N. and Reicke, B. (2012) Bridging the gap: Attribute and spatial metaphors for tangible interface design. In Proceedings of Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI '12), ACM Press (Kingston, Canada, February 19-23), 161-168.
• Antle, A.N., Corness, G., Bakker, S., Droumeva, M., van den Hoven, E., and Bevans, A. (2009) Designing to support reasoned imagination through embodied metaphor. In Proceedings of Creativity and Cognition(C&C '09) , ACM Press (Berkeley, CA, USA), 275-284. [23% acceptance rate]
• Antle, A.N. Embodied child computer interaction -- Why embodiment matters, ACM Interactions, March+April Issue (2009), 27-30.

Springboard Studies: Connecting Body Balance with Meanings of Balance

This project involves a set of studies in which we explore the usability and user experience benefits of using image schema-based conceptual metaphors of BALANCE to structure the relation between input actions and digital representations of abstract concepts in whole body environments. Springboard's interaction layer was designed to connect spatial-balance and body-balance with meanings of balance in social justice and math. As the user moves their body in and out of balance, they affect the display of digital images and sounds that represent different concepts of balance.

• Antle, A.N., Corness, G., and Bevans, A. Balancing Justice: Exploring embodied metaphor and whole body interaction for an abstract domain. International Journal of Arts and Technology, Special Issue on Whole Body Interaction, (2012), in press.
• Antle, A.N., Corness, G., and Bevans, A. Springboard: Designing image schema based embodied interaction for an abstract domain. Human-Computer Interaction Series, (2011), Springer, 7-18, available online http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-0-85729-433-3.
• Antle, A.N., Corness, G. and Droumeva, M. Springboard: Exploring embodiment, balance and social justice. In Proceedings of Extended Abstracts of Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems (CHI ’09), ACM Press (Boston, USA, 2009), 4027- 4032.

Video

• Springboard: Social Justice. Descriptor: Interview with user of Springboard [High resolution Windows Media 100MB]

MoSo Tangibles Study

MoSo Tangibles are a set of nine tangible sound making objects faciliate the exploration of the benefits of various embodied schemata that structure understandings of musical sound parameters (e.g., volume, tempo, pitch).

• Bakker, S., Antle, A.N. and van den Hoven, E. Embodied metaphors in interaction design, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, Special Issue on Children and Tangibles, (2012), 16, 433-339, available online http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00779-011-0410-4.
• Bakker, S., van den Hoven, E. and Antle, A.N. Embodied metaphors in a tangible system for learning: a user evaluation. In Proceedings of Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI’11), ACM Press (Portugal, 2011), 85-92.
• Bakker, S., Antle, A.N., and van den Hoven, E. Identifying embodied metaphors in children’s sound-action mappings. In Proceedings of Interaction Design for Children (IDC’09), ACM Press (Lake Como, Italy, 2009), 140-149.

Sound Maker Studies

Sound Maker is an interactive environment that faciliates the exploration of the benefits of various embodied schemata that structure understandings of musical sound parameters (e.g., volume, tempo, pitch).

• Antle, A.N., Corness, G., Droumeva, M., Human-Computer-Intuition? Exploring the Cognitive Basis for Intuition in Embodied Interaction. International Journal of Arts and Technology (2009) 235-254.
• Antle, A.N., Corness, G., & Droumeva, M., What the Body Knows: Exploring the Benefits of Embodied Metaphors in Hybrid Physical Digital Environments, Interacting with Computers: Special Issue on Enactive Interfaces, Elsevier (2009) 66-75.
• Antle, A.N., Droumeva, M. and Corness, G. Playing with The Sound Maker: Do embodied metaphors help children learn? In Proc. Conference on Interaction Design for Children (Chicago, IL, USA, 2008), ACM press, 178-185. [top rated paper].

December 2007: These videos show short segments of pairs of adult participants exploring and/or succeeding at various sound making pattern tasks using the third prototype of The SoundsMaker (aka Beatniks) System.

• Speed-Tempo1. Descriptor: Exploring Speed-Tempo relationship in the inuitive system. [High resolution Quicktime 114MB]
• Speed-Tempo2. Descriptor: Demonstrating Speed-Tempo relationship in the inuitive system. [High resolution Quicktime 45MB]
• Proximity-Pitch. Descriptor: Exploring Proximity-Pitch (Discoverable) in the inuitive system. [High resolution Quicktime 34MB]
• Flow-Rhythm. Descriptor: Exploring Flow (Synchronous & smooth verus Asynchronous & choppy)-Rhythm in the inuitive system. [High resolution Quicktime 200MB]
• Spatial Mental Models. Descriptor: Particpants verbally and gesturally make spatial references in nonintuitive system. [High resolution Quicktime 114 MB]

**Please cite appropriately. Please do not copy or distribute.

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