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The possibility of linking paper to digital information is enhanced by recent developments in printed electronics. In this article we report the design and evaluation of a local newspaper augmented with capacitive touch regions and an embedded Bluetooth chip working with an adjunct device. These allowed the interactive playback of associated audio and the registration of manual voting actions on the web. Design conventions inherited from paper and the web were explored by showing four different versions of an interactive newspaper to 16 community residents. The diverse responses of residents are described, outlining the potential of the approach for local journalism and recommendations for the design of interactive newsprint.

With current digital technologies, people have large archives of digital media, such as images and audio files, but there are only limited means to include these media in creative practices of crafting and making. Nevertheless, studies have shown that crafting with digital media often makes these media more cherished and that people enjoy being creative with their digital media. This paper aims to open up the way for novel means for crafting, which include digital media in integrations with physical construction, here called ‘hybrid crafting’. Notions of hybrid crafting were explored to inform the design of products or systems that may support these new crafting practices. We designed ‘Materialise’—a building set that allows for the inclusion of digital images and audio files in physical constructions by using tangible building blocks that can display images or play audio files, alongside a variety of other physical components—and used this set in four hands-on creative workshops to gain insight into how people go about doing hybrid crafting; whether hybrid crafting is desirable; what the characteristics of hybrid crafting are; and how we may design to support these practices. By reflecting on the findings from these workshops, we provide concrete guidelines for the design of novel hybrid crafting products or systems that address craft context, process and result. We aim to open up the design space to designing for hybrid crafting because these new practices provide interesting new challenges and opportunities for future crafting that can lead to novel forms of creative expression.

Because most teenagers strive for freedom and try to live autonomously, communication with their parents could be improved. It appeared from a literature review and a diary study that parent-teenager communication primarily addresses teenager-oriented everyday activities. However, it also showed teenagers have a substantial interest in getting to know their parents and their parents’ past. The study described in this paper seeks to address this opportunity by designing a product for parents and teenagers that facilitates communication about the past of the parents. The resulting design, called Cueb, is a set of interactive digital photo cubes with which parents and teenagers can explore individual and shared experiences and are triggered to exchange stories. An evaluation of a prototype of Cueb with four families showed that the participants felt significantly more triggered and supported to share their experiences and tell stories with Cueb’s full functionality (connecting cubes, switching, and locking photographs) than with limited functionality (shaking to display random photographs), similar to more traditional photo media.

Cueb is a set of interactive photo cubes that aims to encourage parents and teenagers to explore digital photos of their individual and shared experiences, reminisce, and exchange stories. Family members each have their own cube with photos of their individual experiences. Shaking a cube will randomly display photos on six sides. Connecting cubes by holding them together will display photos of the family members' shared experiences. Photos can be transferred between cubes and locked for use as a selection filter to find related photos. This generates surprising photo results and allows parents and teenagers to compare their experiences.

Reading books can serve as a means of gathering information, relaxing and escaping daily stress. Although reading is often primarily an individual activity, many readers also enjoy sharing reading experiences with friends, relatives, colleagues and, through the internet, even with strangers. Apart from valuing these individual and collective book activities, books as physical artifacts are also valued, for example because of the memories associated with them. This paper investigates how books can be enhanced with a new product, system or service. In a qualitative interview study, the main reasons for valuing books were found to be related to the self (individual activities and feelings), experiences (e.g., enjoyment or release) and personal values (e.g., embodiment of ideals or personification). As a result, it was decided for the remainder of this study to focus on communication about books, because in addition to individual book-related activities and feelings, users indicated to communicate about books a lot. A book community Web site, called Shelf, was developed to investigate whether book communication could be increased by facilitating an online community and whether users would appreciate the Web site functionality. Shelf was used in a 14-day user evaluation, and it was concluded that the Web site increased the extent to which readers communicated about books. We expect that such an online book community would be a valuable enhancement of current book customs, in particular in combination with the current e-book trend, for various types of readers who would like to share their experiences.

How can civic technology be designed to encourage more public engagement? What new methods of data collection and sharing can be used to engender a different relationship between citizens and the state? One approach has been to design physical systems that draw people in and which they can trust, leading them to give their views, opinions or other data. So far, they have been largely used to elicit feedback or votes for one or two questions about a given topic. Here, we describe a physical system, called Sens-Us, which was designed to ask a range of questions about personal and sensitive information, within the context of rethinking the UK Census. An in-the-wild study of its deployment in a city cultural center showed how a diversity of people approached, answered and compared the data that had been collected about themselves with others. We discuss the findings in relation to the pros and cons of using this kind of innovative technology when wanting to promote civic engagement or other forms of public engagement.

Internet of things (IoT) devices and sensor kits have the potential to democratize the access, use, and appropriation of data. Despite the increased availability of low cost sensors, most of the produced data is "black box" in nature: users often do not know how to access or interpret data. We propose a "human-data design" approach in which end-users are given tools to create, share, and use data through tangible and physical visualizations. This paper introduces Physikit, a system designed to allow users to explore and engage with environmental data through physical ambient visualizations. We report on the design and implementation of Physikit, and present a two-week field study which showed that participants got an increased sense of the meaning of data, embellished and appropriated the basic visualizations to make them blend into their homes, and used the visualizations as a probe for community engagement and social behavior.

Gathering opinions from young children is challenging and different methods have been explored. In this paper we investigated how tangible devices can be used to gather feedback from children in the context of a theater performance. We introduce SmallTalk, a tangible survey system designed for use within a theater space to capture what children, aged 4 to 9, thought of a live performance they had just seen. We describe how the system was designed to build on previous feedback methods that had been tried; while at the same time meeting the constraints of the challenging theater context. We present results from seven deployments of SmallTalk and based on these we briefly discuss its value as a method for evaluating the theater performance. We then look at how the results validated the system design and present several design implications that more generally relate to tangible feedback systems for children.

Organizers regularly want to understand the experiences of event goers and typically use survey methods, with researchers and clipboards. However, gathering opinions in such ways is difficult to do without disrupting the event goers' experience. In place of clipboard surveys, we developed a quite different form of tangible questionnaire, called VoxBox, which uses physical interactions to transform feedback giving into a playful and engaging experience that fits much more with the event itself. Here we question if such a device can successfully draw a diverse representation of event attendees to voice relevant opinions during the event. We describe an observational study of VoxBox based on two real-world deployments, and present findings on (1) the experiences VoxBox provides to facilitators and users; and (2) its capabilities as a means for opinion gathering. We conclude by discussing lessons learned, design implications, and the wide potential for tangible questionnaires in other application areas.

In this paper we focus on a design feature of VoxBox, our tangible system for gathering public opinion. We discuss observations around a ball tube that step by step releases a stress ball during the interaction with our system, which is implemented to encourage participation and completion. Based on our observations around this feature that makes incentivisation inherent to the system’s design, we highlight the lessons we learned about designing for incentivisation.

In this position paper we discuss 'Materialise' – a building set consisting of physical building blocks and digital media input that allows for the building of hybrid creations – as an example of a design that integrates technology in creative practice. We show it does so by facilitating interactive craft practice, aestheticizing technology, and allowing for the customization of technology. Through an easy-to-use integration of technology and creative practice the set can benefit digital artists, as well as allow 'everyday people' to become digital artists. As such, we argue, it opens up a promising future direction for design, in which focus lies on the integration of technology and creative practice, or design for interactive or hybrid craft.

Our aim was to design an installation of interactive devices that helps people to increase their well-being. This paper describes the project's analysis phase, consisting of mind maps, cultural probes and questionnaires.

Nowadays, people engage in a diverse range of craft practices in their everyday lives, which take place in physical and digital realms, such as creating decorations for their homes, modifying IKEA furniture, making digital photo collages, or creating their own personal websites. Within this increasingly hybrid age, in which people engage with physical and digital artefacts alongside each other and simultaneously, the research presented in this thesis poses that there are opportunities for new forms of making and creativity at the intersection of physical and digital realms. In other words, it introduces hybrid craft as a new everyday craft practice. Using an interaction design research methodology that consists of research for design (interviewing physical and digital crafters about their current practices) and research through design (designing, prototyping, and evaluating a novel toolkit for hybrid craft, called Materialise), this thesis explores what forms hybrid craft practice may take in everyday life, and what new systems or tools could be designed that facilitate this practice. Employing a comparison of physical and digital craft practices, and findings from design work, design guidelines are formulated for effective combination of physical and digital materials, tools, and techniques, and the realisation of interactive hybrid craft results in interaction design, for example by implementing surprising material behaviour within physical-digital combinations, and by realising techniques to work with physical and digital materials in the same materiality realm. Through empirical and theoretical grounding and reflection, this thesis establishes hybrid craft as a novel concept within design research and craft communities that has a wide range of possibilities in everyday life, both in offering ways to do more with digital media, and in encouraging new forms of making and creativity.