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Supporting configurability in a mixed-media environment for design students

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Abstract

In many environments, the landscape of space and artefacts is evolving and changing with the tasks at hand. Integrating digital media and computation in these environments has to take into account the fact that people will configure space functions and tools according to the situation, organising use in unexpected ways. In this article, we present and discuss how the issue of configurability is dealt with, in a series of field trials with design students. The aim of these trials was to construct, for architecture and interaction design students, a mixed-media environment for inspirational learning. The results include physical infrastructure in space and in furniture as integral parts of the interaction technology and the creation of composite representations called “mixed objects‘’, which blend digital and non-digital media in one design artefact. Configurability has to be supported at different levels (infrastructures, artefacts, functions) and across the physical and digital realms.

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Notes

  1. IST-2001-33064 Atelier—Architecture and Technologies for Inspirational Learning Environments http://atelier.k3.mah.se/, part of the Disappearing Computer Initiative of the FET area of the IST research program.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to our co-researchers at the Malmö School of Arts & Communication, the Interactive Institute, the Consorzio Milano Ricerche and University of Milano–Bicocca, the University of Oulu, the Academy of Fine Arts and the Technical University in Vienna, and Imagination Computer Services, as well as to students and teaching staff in Malmö and Vienna. Finally, we would like to acknowledge Infotech Oulu for supporting this research at the University of Oulu. The authors wish to thank the three anonymous reviewers and the meta-reviewer for their careful reading of the preliminary version of the paper and for the many suggestions they gave to improve its final version.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Interactive Institute, Sweden

    Thomas Binder

  2. DISCo, University of Milano–Bicocca, Italy

    Giorgio De Michelis

  3. Imagination Computer Services GesmbH, Austria

    Michael Gervautz

  4. University of Oulu, Finland

    Giulio Jacucci

  5. Vienna University of Technology, Austria

    Kresimir Matkovic, Thomas Psik & Ina Wagner

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  1. Thomas Binder
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  2. Giorgio De Michelis
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Correspondence to Giulio Jacucci.

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Binder, T., De Michelis, G., Gervautz, M. et al. Supporting configurability in a mixed-media environment for design students. Pers Ubiquit Comput 8, 310–325 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-004-0294-7

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