research-article

Open access

Fluid Speculations: Drawing Artefacts in Watercolour as Experimentation in Research Through Design

Author:

Paulina YurmanAuthors Info & Claims

C&C '21: Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Creativity and Cognition

Article No.: 38, Pages 1 - 13

https://doi.org/10.1145/3450741.3466777

Published: 22 June 2021 Publication History

Abstract

This pictorial paper presents design experimentations using drawing, watercolour and storytelling as forms of speculation about artefacts and technologies. The use of watercolour, a medium that bleeds and has leaky boundaries, allowed ambiguity, defamiliarization and critical reflection to enter the research space, encouraging new understandings of artefacts and their latent possibilities. Watercolour was also valuable for speculating about designs that deal with bodily fluids, and for Drawing Conversations that facilitated reinterpretations of artefacts through drawings created by two different people. Intersecting themes about cognition, creativity and technology, this pictorial presents examples that illustrate how watercolour drawing can impact on the representation of speculative concepts, including the creation of visual conversations. The drawings shown here are presented as representations embodying families of ideas and themes related to the objects they symbolize, together with the design spaces they suggest and the stories they invite us to imagine.

References

[1]

Madeline Akrich. 1992. The De-Scription of Technical Objects. In W. Bijker & J. Law (eds), Shaping technology/building society: studies in Sociotechnical change. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT.

[2]

Kristina Andersen. 2014. The deliberate cargo cult. In Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems (DIS ‘14). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 627–636.

Digital Library

[3]

Kristina Andersen, Laura Devendorf, James Pierce, Ron Wakkary, and Daniela K. Rosner. 2018. Disruptive Improvisations: Making Use of Non-Deterministic Art Practices in HCI. In Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ‘18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper W11, 1–8.

Digital Library

[4]

Genevieve Bell, Mark Blythe, and Phoebe Sengers. 2005. Making by making strange: Defamiliarization and the design of domestic technologies. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 12, 2 (June 2005), 149–173.

Digital Library

[5]

John Berger. 2005. Berger on Drawing. Occasional Press, Ireland

[6]

Munish Bhatia, Simranpreet Kaur, and Sandeep K. Sood. 2020. IoT-Inspired Smart Toilet System for Home-Based Urine Infection Prediction. ACM Trans. Comput. Healthcare 1, 3, Article 14 (May 2020), 25 pages.

Digital Library

[7]

Mark Blythe, Enrique Encinas, Jofish Kaye, Miriam Lueck Avery, Rob McCabe, and Kristina Andersen. 2018. Imaginary Design Workbooks: Constructive Criticism and Practical Provocation. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper 233, 1–12.

Digital Library

[8]

Susanne Bødker. 1998. Understanding representation in design. Hum.-Comput. Interact. 13, 2 (June 1998), 107–125.

Digital Library

[9]

Nadia Campo Woytuk, Marie Louise Juul Søndergaard, Marianela Ciolfi Felice, and Madeline Balaam. 2020. Touching and Being in Touch with the Menstruating Body. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–14.

Digital Library

[10]

Audrey Desjardins, Ron Wakkary, and Xiao Zhang. 2012. Exquisite corpses that explore interactions. In CHI ‘12 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ‘12). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1517–1522.

Digital Library

[11]

Laura Devendorf, Kristina Andersen, Daniela K. Rosner, Ron Wakkary, and James Pierce. 2019. From HCI to HCIAmusement: Strategies for Engaging what New Technology Makes Old. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper 35, 1–12.

Digital Library

[12]

Catherine D'Ignazio, Alexis Hope, Becky Michelson, Robyn Churchill, and Ethan Zuckerman. 2016. A Feminist HCI Approach to Designing Postpartum Technologies: “When I first saw a breast pump I was wondering if it was a joke”. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘16). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 2612–2622.

Digital Library

[13]

Susan Finley and J. Gary Knowles. 1995. Researcher as artist/artist as researcher. In Qualitative inquiry, 1(1), pp.110-142.

[14]

Christopher Frayling. 1993. Research in Art and Design. Royal College of Art Research Papers 1, 1 (1993),1-5

[15]

William W. Gaver, Jacob Beaver, and Steve Benford. 2003. Ambiguity as a resource for design. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘03). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 233–240.

Digital Library

[16]

William W. Gaver, Andrew Boucher, Sarah Pennington, and Brendan Walker. 2004. Cultural probes and the value of uncertainty. Interactions 11, 5 (September + October 2004), 53–56.

Digital Library

[17]

William Gaver. 2012. What should we expect from research through design? In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘12). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 937–946.

Digital Library

[18]

Vinod Goel. 1995. Sketches of Thought. The MIT Press, Cambridge, 1995

[19]

Vinod Goel. 2013. Sketchy Thoughts. Video.Thinking through drawing Symposium, 2013, Met & Teacher's College, NYC. Available at: VIMEO.COM/108790870. [Accessed 11/1/20]

[20]

Gabriela Goldschmidt. 2017. Manual sketching: Why is it still relevant?. In The active image: Architecture and engineering in the age of modelling. Springer International Publishing Editors: Sabine Ammon & Remei Capdevila-Werning.

[21]

Karey Helms. 2019. Do You Have to Pee? A Design Space for Intimate and Somatic Data. In Proceedings of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ‘19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1209–1222.

Digital Library

[22]

Sarah Homewood, Laurens Boer, and Anna Vallgårda. 2020. Designers in White Coats: Deploying Ovum, a Fertility Tracking Device. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–13.

Digital Library

[23]

Alexis Hope, Catherine D'Ignazio, Josephine Hoy, Rebecca Michelson, Jennifer Roberts, Kate Krontiris, and Ethan Zuckerman. 2019. Hackathons as Participatory Design: Iterating Feminist Utopias. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper 61, 1–14.

Digital Library

[24]

Tim Ingold. 2013. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Routledge.

[25]

Clinton Jorge, Valentina Nisi, Nuno Nunes, Giovanni Innella, Miguel Caldeira, and Duarte Sousa. 2013. Ambiguity in design: an airport split-flap display storytelling installation. In CHI ‘13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ‘13). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 541–546.

Digital Library

[26]

Ciléin Kearns. 2019. Is drawing a valuable skill in surgical practice? 100 surgeons weigh in. Journal of Visual Communication in Medicine. Vol 42, 2019

[27]

Vera Khovanskaya, Phoebe Sengers, Melissa Mazmanian, and Charles Darrah. 2017. Reworking the Gaps between Design and Ethnography. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘17). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 5373–5385.

Digital Library

[28]

Ahyeon Koh, Daeshik Kang, Yeguang Xue, Seungmin Lee, Rafal M. Pielak, Jeonghyun Kim, Taehwan Hwang, Seunghwan Min, Anthony Banks, Philippe Bastien, Megan C. Manco, Liang Wang, Kaitlyn R. Ammann, Kyung-In Jang, Phillip Won, Seungyong Han, Roozbeh Ghaffari, Ungyu Paik, Marvin J. Slepian, Guive Balooch, Yonggang Huang and John A. Rogers. 2016. A soft, wearable microfluidic device for the capture, storage, and colorimetric sensing of sweat. Science Translational Medicine 23 Nov 2016:Vol. 8, Issue 366, pp. 366ra165.

[29]

Nantia Koulidou, Jayne Wallace, Miriam Sturdee, and Abigail Durrant. 2020. Drawing on Experiences of Self: Dialogical Sketching. In Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ‘20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 255–267.

Digital Library

[30]

Karen Levy. 2014. Intimate surveillance. Idaho L. Rev. 51: 679

[31]

Dan Lockton, Some Cracks In The Paving and Water Trapped In The Window Of A British Rail Class 450 Train Carriage. 2018. Apophenia As Method—Or, Everything Is Either A Metaphor Or An Analogue Computer. Disruptive Improvisation: Making Use of Non-Deterministic Art Practices, workshop at CHI 2018: ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 21–26 April 2018, Montreal

[32]

Katsufumi Matsui, Kazunori Ogasawara, Emi Tamaki, and Ken Iwasaki. 2013. Urine computer interaction to avoid spattering: study of urination handling. In Proceedings of the 4th Augmented Human International Conference (AH ‘13). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 77–80.

Digital Library

[33]

Maarit Anna Mäkelä, Nithikul Nimkulrat, Tero Heikkinen. 2014. Drawing as a Research Tool: Making and understanding in art and design practice. Studies in Material Thinking. AUT University. Vol 10 (February 2014)

[34]

Ananta Narayanan Balaji, Chen Yuan, Bo Wang, Li-Shiuan Peh, and Huilin Shao. 2019. PH Watch - Leveraging Pulse Oximeters in Existing Wearables for Reusable, Real-time Monitoring of pH in Sweat (demo). In Proceedings of the 17th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys ‘19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 687–688.

Digital Library

[35]

William Odom, Tom Jenkins, Kristina Andersen, Bill Gaver, James Pierce, Anna Vallgårda, Andy Boucher, David Chatting, Janne van Kollenburg, and Kevin Lefeuvre. 2017. Crafting a place for attending to the things of design at CHI. interactions 25, 1 (January + February 2018), 52–57.

Digital Library

[36]

Dr. Susanne Oertel, Dr. Michael Jank, Björn Schmitz, and Dr. Nadine Lang. 2016. Monitoring of biomarkers in sweat with printed sensors combined with sport wearables. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing: Adjunct (UbiComp ‘16). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 893–898.

Digital Library

[37]

Roger Penrose. Video. 2015. How Drawing is Used for Maths and Science. Retrieved June 2020 from www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb4V4O-7M4s

[38]

James Pierce. 2019. Smart Home Security Cameras and Shifting Lines of Creepiness: A Design-Led Inquiry. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper 45, 1–14.

Digital Library

[39]

Elizabeth Rey, Aadhar Jain, Saeed Abdullah, Tanzeem Choudhury, and David Erickson. 2018. Personalized stress monitoring: a smartphone-enabled system for quantification of salivary cortisol. Personal Ubiquitous Comput. 22, 4 (August 2018), 867–877.

Digital Library

[40]

Terry Rosenberg. 2008. New Beginnings and Monstrous Births: Notes toward an Appreciation of Ideational Drawing, Garner, S., ed. 2008. In Writing on Drawing: Essays on Drawing Practice and Research. Intellect Books, Bristol, UK, pages 97 to 110

[41]

Daniela Rosner, Jean-François Blanchette, Leah Buechley, Paul Dourish, and Melissa Mazmanian. 2012. From materials to materiality: connecting practice and theory in hc. In CHI ‘12 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ‘12). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 2787–2790.

Digital Library

[42]

Donald A. Schön. 1983. The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York: Basic Books.

[43]

Phoebe Sengers and Bill Gaver. 2006. Staying open to interpretation: engaging multiple meanings in design and evaluation. In Proceedings of the 6th conference on Designing Interactive systems (DIS ‘06). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 99–108.

Digital Library

[44]

Margrit Shildrick. 1994. Leaky bodies and boundaries : feminism, deconstruction and bioethics. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

[45]

Miriam Sturdee and Joseph Lindley. 2019. Sketching & Drawing as Future Inquiry in HCI. In Proceedings of the Halfway to the Future Symposium 2019 (HTTF 2019). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 18, 1–10.

Digital Library

[46]

Marie Louise Juul Søndergaard, Ozgun Kilic Afsar, Marianela Ciolfi Felice, Nadia Campo Woytuk, and Madeline Balaam. 2020. Designing with Intimate Materials and Movements: Making “Menarche Bits”. In Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ‘20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 587–600.

Digital Library

[47]

Marie Louise Juul Søndergaard. 2020. Troubling Design: A Design Program for Designing with Women's Health. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 27, 4, Article 24 (September 2020), 36 pages.

Digital Library

[48]

Barbara Tversky, Masaki Suwa, Maneesh Agrawala, Julie Heiser, Chris Stolte, Pat Hanrahan, Doantam Phan, Jeff Klinger, Marie-Paule Daniel, Paul Lee and John Haymaker. 2003. “Sketches for Design and Design of Sketches,” In Human Behavior in Design: Individuals, Teams, Tools., 2003, pp. 79-86. Springer.

[49]

Ron Wakkary, William Odom, Sabrina Hauser, Garnet Hertz, and Henry Lin. 2015. Material speculation: actual artifacts for critical inquiry. In Proceedings of The Fifth Decennial Aarhus Conference on Critical Alternatives (CA ‘15). Aarhus University Press, Aarhus N, 97–108.

Digital Library

[50]

Chelsea-Joy Wardle, Mitchell Green, Christine Wanjiru Mburu, and Melissa Densmore. 2018. Exploring Codesign with Breastfeeding Mothers. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper 482, 1–12.

Digital Library

[51]

Daniel Weil. 2011. Daniel Weil: Drawing the Process. Video. Pentagram Design. retrieved on July 2020 from https://vimeo.com/19046723

[52]

Paulina Yurman. 2019. Designing for Ambivalence: A designer's research into the role of smartphones for mothers and young children. PhD Thesis, Goldsmiths University of London.

[53]

Paulina Yurman. 2020. Understanding the Ageing Body Through its Fluids. Position Paper for DIS 2020 virtual workshop Don't Blush: Sexuality, Aging & Design https://agesextech.wordpress.com/submissions/

[54]

John Zimmerman, Jodi Forlizzi, and Shelley Evenson. 2007. Research through design as a method for interaction design research in HCI. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘07). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 493–502.

Digital Library

[55]

Museum of Modern Art Learning. Retrieved on September 2020 from Moma: https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/surrealism/tapping-the-subconsciousautomatism-and-dreams/

[56]

Make the Breast Pump not Suck. Retrieved on July 2020 from https://makethebreastpumpnotsuck2018.com

[57]

Jon Marshall. Retrieved on July 2020 from https://twitter.com/jonmarshalll

[58]

Meret Oppenheim. 1936. Object. Retrieved on January 2018 from https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/meretoppenheim-object-paris-1936/

[59]

Research through Design. Retrieved on June 2020 from www.researchthroughdesign.org

Cited By

Vasconcelos EAndersen KWakkary R(2024)The table: considering sketching as collective makingProceedings of the 13th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3679318.3685490(1-15)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3679318.3685490
Vasconcelos EAndersen KWakkary R(2024)Who is holding the pen? Annotating collaborative processesProceedings of the 13th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3679318.3685401(1-12)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3679318.3685401
Tost JFlechtner RMaué RHeidmann F(2024)Caring for a companion as a form of self-care. Exploring the design space for irritating companion technologies for mental healthProceedings of the 13th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3679318.3685343(1-15)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3679318.3685343
Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Experiential role of artefacts in cooperative design
C&T '09: Proceedings of the fourth international conference on Communities and technologies

The role of material artefacts in supporting distributed and co-located work practices has been well acknowledged within HCI and CSCW research. In this paper, we show that in addition to their ecological, coordinative and organizational support, ...
Interacting through artefacts: interaction designers and software developers engaging in the activity of software creation
Storycoding - Programming Physical Artefacts for Research Through Design
DIS '20: Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference

Making programmable physical artefacts and prototypes has inherent value for Research-through-Design (RtD) based HCI. Furthermore, the abstractions and representations within RtD and programming are vastly different, such as between observations, ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

C&C '21: Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Creativity and Cognition

June 2021

581 pages

ISBN:9781450383769

DOI:10.1145/3450741

General Chairs:
Corina Sas
Lancaster University, UK
,
Neil Maiden
City, University of London, UK

Copyright © 2021 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

Sponsors

SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 22 June 2021

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Badges

Honorable Mention

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed limited

Conference

C&C '21

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

C&C '21: Creativity and Cognition

June 22 - 23, 2021

Virtual Event, Italy

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 108 of 371 submissions, 29%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

7
Total Citations
View Citations
748
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)209
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)30

Reflects downloads up to 13 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Vasconcelos EAndersen KWakkary R(2024)The table: considering sketching as collective makingProceedings of the 13th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3679318.3685490(1-15)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3679318.3685490
Vasconcelos EAndersen KWakkary R(2024)Who is holding the pen? Annotating collaborative processesProceedings of the 13th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3679318.3685401(1-12)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3679318.3685401
Tost JFlechtner RMaué RHeidmann F(2024)Caring for a companion as a form of self-care. Exploring the design space for irritating companion technologies for mental healthProceedings of the 13th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3679318.3685343(1-15)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3679318.3685343
Luo YTedeschi MGkouskos DResmini A(2024)Co-Constructing Agency in Human-AI InteractionsAdjunct Proceedings of the 2024 Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3677045.3685459(1-5)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3677045.3685459
Bønlykke SMadsen KJenkins T(2024)Taking the bizarre seriously: dreams as a material for interaction designProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661562(699-713)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643834.3661562
Bremers AMaiden NSas C(2022)A computer that sketches along with youProceedings of the 14th Conference on Creativity and Cognition10.1145/3527927.3533732(669-673)Online publication date: 20-Jun-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3527927.3533732
Gamboa MMaiden NSas C(2022)Conversations with Myself: Sketching Workshop Experiences in Design EpistemologyProceedings of the 14th Conference on Creativity and Cognition10.1145/3527927.3531450(71-82)Online publication date: 20-Jun-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3527927.3531450

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents