Design and digital technologies to support a sense of self and human relationships for people living with dementia are both urgently needed. We present an enquiry into design for dementia facilitated by a public art commission for an adult mental health unit in a hospital in the UK. The interactive art piece was informed by the notion of personhood in dementia that foregrounds the person's social being and interpersonal relationships as sites where self is maintained and constructed. How clients, clients' family members and staff used the piece is reported and insights related to the notions of home, intimacy, possessions and self are presented. The art piece served as window on both dementia and the institution leading to a number of insights and implications for design.

Women's understandings of their own intimate anatomy has been identified as critical to women's reproductive health and sexual wellbeing. However, talking about it, seeking medical help when necessary as well as examining oneself in order to 'know' oneself is complicated by social-cultural constructions of the vagina, i.e. it is something private, shameful and not to be talked about. In response to this, we designed Labella, an augmented system that supports intimate bodily knowledge and pelvic fitness in women. It combines a pair of underwear and a mobile phone as a tool for embodied intimate self-discovery. In this paper, we describe Labella, and its evaluation with fourteen women, aged 25-63. We show how through situated embodied perception Labella empowers 'looking'. We highlight how the simple act of augmented looking enables the construction of knowledge which ranges from establishing the 'very basics' through to a nuanced understanding of pelvic muscle structure. Finally, we highlight the role of awkwardness and humour in the design of interactions to overcome taboo.

No abstract

We report on a design-led study in the UK that aimed to understand barriers to children (aged 5 to 14 years) 'playing out' in their neighbourhood and explore the potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) for supporting children's free play that extends outdoors. The study forms a design ethnography, combining observational fieldwork with design prototyping and co-creative activities across four linked workshops, where we used BBC micro:bit devices to co-create new IoT designs with the participating children. Our collective account contributes new insights about the physical and interactive features of micro:bits that shaped play, gameplay, and social interaction in the workshops, illuminating an emerging design space for supporting 'digital playing out' that is grounded in empirical instances. We highlight opportunities for designing for digital playing out in ways that promote social negotiation, supports varying participation, allows for integrating cultural influences, and accounts for the weaving together of placemaking and play.

Music listening practices are changing. Mobile, networked devices now offer rich opportunities not just for personal music consumption but also for personally broadcasting music and for sharing digital meta-data concerning tastes, preferences and general listening habits. However, experiences of music listening and sharing on the move and how this has been impacted by developments in mobile technology remain under-explored. In this paper we present an empirical study of the sociality of mobile music experiences, 'in the wild', using a new location-based mobile music-sharing application (Pocketsong), designed as a technology probe. We report users' experiences of Pocketsong (distilled from interviews), and critically examine the affordances of mobile music applications, the sociality of sharing and 'co-listening', and the relationships between digitally-mediated mobile music consumption and self-expression. Based upon this we reflect upon the interaction design challenges of developing mobile music technologies that work in digitally-mediated social spaces.