Moving Sensory Ethnography Online

Barker, Ned

doi:10.4135/9781529798388

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…The research design uses ethnographic fieldwork across multiple industrial contexts to produce thick descriptions of how novel robotic technologies can remediate the dynamics of touch as situated in the social and sensory contexts of labour in the 'real world' (see [2], [3], [38], [39] for details on the methodological framing). In this theoretically orientated paper, we offer an ethnographic narrative derived from one site where a cobot had been recently introduced to assist with the task of 'swabbing' in a glass factory.…”

Section: Research Design and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Collaborative Robots and Tangled Passages of Tactile-Affects

Barker

Jewitt

2023

J. Hum.-Robot Interact.

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Collaborative robots are increasingly entering industrial contexts and workflows. These contexts are not just locations for production, they are vibrant social and sensory environments. For better or for worse their entry brings potential to reorganize established tactile and affective dynamics that encompass production processes. There is still much to be learned about these highly contextual and complex dynamics in HRI research and the design of industrial robotics; common approaches in industrial collaborative robotics are restricted to evaluating ‘effective interface design’ whereas methods that seek to measure ‘affective touch’ have limited application to these industrial domains. This paper offers an extended analytical framework and methodological approach to deepen understandings of affect and touch beyond emotional responses to direct human-robot interactions. These distinct contributions are grounded in fieldwork in a glass factory with newly installed collaborative robots. They are illustrated through an ethnographic narrative that traces the emergence and circulation of affect, across material, experiential and social planes. Beyond this single case ‘tangled passages of tactile-affects’ is offered as novel and valuable concept, that is distinct from the notion of ‘affective touch’, and holds potential to generate holistic and nuanced understandings of how human experiences can be affected by the introduction of new robots in ‘the wild’.

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Section: Research Design and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Collaborative Robots and Tangled Passages of Tactile-Affects

Barker

Jewitt

2023

J. Hum.-Robot Interact.

Self Cite

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“…'Understanding bodily knowing through research on and with the body is a founding feature of the project, which combines a multimodal (Jewitt et al, 2016) and multisensory ethnographic (Barker, 2022) in collaboration with design methods in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)…' (Jewitt et al, 2023: 516) This way of working responds to Bateman (2021) who takes a macro view of social semiotics in the context of digital media by approaching the field and its definitions from first principles. He suggests that there is insufficient attention paid to how 'unhelpful boundaries' between definitions could be overcome to 'help articulate notions of digital media that are more supportive of productive engagements with research and issues of literacy.'…”

Section: Terms and Conditions: A Starting Pointmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theory-building in the social, material and postdigital worlds of play: Participatory research and multimodal discourse analysis

Potter

2024

Multimodality & Society

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This article is about using participatory research and multimodal discourse analysis to scaffold theory-building, with a focus on how children draw on their lifeworlds, folkloric imagination, and media experiences to generate meanings in, and through, their play. It draws on a tradition of research which employs a multimodal semiotic lens to analyse interaction and communication between social actors in combination with sociocultural theory to generate hypotheses about a phenomenon. The focus is on how multimodal discourse analysis operates when partnered in research designs with other interpretive constructs, drawn from sociocultural, socio-material and postdigital frames. Examples are featured from two research projects centred on children’s play, and the central argument here is that play, with its reference points in media, popular culture and traditional folkloric forms is a particular location for theory-building on the postdigital nature of contemporary lived experience.

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Creative Probes, Proxy Feelers, and Speculations on Interactive Skin

Jewitt

Barker

Golmohammadi

2022

MTI

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This paper critically discusses the combination of creative and social research methods to generate a novel approach to explore the multimodal technoscape. This paper draws on an interdisciplinary exploratory case study on interactive skin—an emergent technology that augments and/or interacts with the skin. This paper shows how concepts from skin studies and the HCI literature can be used to draw on creative methods to think about and with the body. We describe the use of an online probe pack, a speculative research workshop and sensory research interviews using ‘proxy feelers’ to agitate the design space of interactive skin futures. We show how combining these methods provoked and expanded the scope of interactive skin from the technological to the sensory and the social. We discuss the opportunities and challenges of the research dialogues that this approach facilitated, make the case for creative methodological improvisation and exploration of emergent technologies and show how creative and social research methods can be combined to explore the interconnection between technology, society and design.

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Moving Sensory Ethnography Online

Abstract: Author bio.

Cited by 3 publications

References 6 publications

Collaborative Robots and Tangled Passages of Tactile-Affects

Collaborative Robots and Tangled Passages of Tactile-Affects

Theory-building in the social, material and postdigital worlds of play: Participatory research and multimodal discourse analysis

Creative Probes, Proxy Feelers, and Speculations on Interactive Skin

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