Physicality & Design Workshop at DIS 2008 - Cape Town, South Africa

The aim of the Physicality & Design Workshop is to discover the level of importance of physical interaction in the design process and, specifically, the level of fidelity of model required to get appropriate information from it without expending too much time and/or money.

This is particularly a problem facing designers in modern businesses as the pressure to deliver to very tight deadlines and within tight profit margins often implies that physical prototypes are frequently not produced or are produced with limited functionality or at a low fidelity level.

Furthermore, this workshop will look at how design changes in the face of the more fluid boundaries between physical and digital products and how design is influenced by the increasing adoption of digital and virtual process in the production of even purely digital artefacts.

SUBMISSIONS
We invite contributions that address the design implications of physicality at two levels:

1. Physicality and the design process
This covers the impact of physicality on the different actors within the design process:
- Designers – How is the traditional use of quite realistic physical models affected by the use of less real digital aspects, e.g. CAD tools vs. 3D models?
- Users – What level of fidelity is required to enable adequate user testing with interactive digital products?
- Clients – What level of digital behaviour is necessary to convey the feel of interaction and what level of physical accuracy is required to convey the feel of the form?

2. Physicality and the designed product
This covers the influence of physicality on the design of a product and the impact of different levels of physical–digital relationships:
- Purely digital products: how does our existing understanding of physicality affect our interaction with virtual objects?
- Predominantly digital products but with some physical aspects: how do our natural reactions to the physical product interconnects with the interaction design of the digital aspects?
- Deeply tangible/ augmented reality products: how do confusions between the physical and digital aspects make product design difficult or do carry over between the two make it easier?

Physicality & Design is a one-day workshop that will be held at Designing Interactive Systems (DIS2008) in Cape Town, South Africa on the 24th February 2008.

DEADLINES
We invite contributions in the form of 2-4 pages long position paper which should be submitted to
devina@physicality.org

Abstract by 21st December 2007
Position Paper by 11th January 2008

STRUCTURE
The structure of the workshop is as follows:
- Presentations of contributions using the Pecha Kucha format.
- Series of “hands on” interactions with pre-prepared prototypes at varying fidelity level and discussion based on the experiences of the participants.
- Creation of prototypes by incrementally stepping up fidelity levels, some of which will be 3D scanned for posterity.
- Summary of the lessons learned.

The lessons learned will be used as part of a larger project investigating the role that physicality plays in design. Participants will be invited to join a forum that will allow them to continue their contribution into the future.

HISTORY
The Physicality & Design workshop follows on from two very successful international workshops, Physicality 2006 and Physicality 2007 which have started a multi-disciplinary community in this novel area of research. This work is part of the DEPtH: Designing for Physicality research project (AH/E507646) supported by AHRC Designing for the 21st Century Initiative.

ORGANISERS
Joanna Hare, Steve Gill
National Centre for Product Design & Development Research
University of Wales Institute Cardiff, UK

Devina Ramduny-Ellis, Alan Dix
Computing Department, InfoLab21
Lancaster University, UK

Masitah Ghazali
Information Systems Dept.
Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia

Related Links
DIS2008 (http://www.sigchi.org/dis2008/)
Physicality 2006 Workshop (http://www.physicality.org/physicality2006/)
Physicality 2007 Workshop (http://www.physicality.org/physicality2007/)
DEPtH: Designing for Physicality (http://www.physicality.org/DEPtH/)

Associated Link: Physicality & Design Workshop @DIS2008, 24th February, South Africa

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