0000000000743900
AUTHOR
Jaana Parviainen
Human-technology choreographies
Bodily movements have traditionally had mostly instrumental value in interaction design. However, movements can also be given a central role in understanding behaviour and in designing technology for humans. This workshop is aiming at taking a fresh, movement-oriented look at the design and evaluation of technology in a wide variety of contexts.
Social Robots and Human Touch in Care : The Perceived Usefulness of Robot Assistance Among Healthcare Professionals
Touching in care work is inevitable, particularly in cases where clients depend on nurses for many activities of daily living, such as bathing, dressing, lifting and assisting. When new technologies are involved in nurse–client relationships, the significance of human touch needs special attention. Stressing the importance of practitioners’ opinions on the usage of robots in care environments, we analyze care workers’ attitudes toward robot assistance in the care of older people and reflect on their ideas of the embodied relationship that caregivers and care receivers have with technology. To examine nurses’ attitudes toward care robots, we use survey data on professional care workers (n = …
Drifting Down the Technologization of Life: Could Choreography-Based Interaction Design Support us in Engaging with the World and our Embodied Living?
The development of interactive technology is often based on the assumption of need to reduce the physical action and cognitive load of the user. However, recent conceptualizations, supported by research in various fields of science, emphasize human physical action in cognitive processes and knowledge formation. In fact, physical and closely related imaginary movement can be seen as the quintessence of humanity. Acknowledging this should imply a new approach to the design of interactive technology. In the current study, we propose a choreographic approach for shifting the focal point of interaction design to the aspects of human activity and movement within a technologized context. Hence, th…
Robots responding to care needs? : A multitasking care robot pursued for 25 years, available products offer simple entertainment and instrumental assistance
Twenty-five years ago, robotics guru Joseph Engelberger had a mission to motivate research teams all over the world to design the ‘Elderly Care Giver’, a multitasking personal robot assistant for everyday care needs in old age. In this article, we discuss how this vision of omnipotent care robots has influenced the design strategies of care robotics, the development of R&D initiatives and ethics research on use of care robots. Despite the expectations of robots revolutionizing care of older people, the role of robots in human care has remained marginal. The value of world trade in service robots, including care robots, is rather small. We argue that the implementation of robots in care is n…
Motions with Emotions? : A Phenomenological Approach to Understanding the Simulated Aliveness of a Robot Body
This article examines how the interactive capabilities of companion robots, particularly their materiality and animate movements, appeal to human users and generate an image of aliveness. Building on Husserl’s phenomenological notion of a ‘double body’ and theories of emotions as affective responses, we develop a new understanding of the robots’ simulated aliveness. Analyzing empirical findings of a field study on the use of the robot Zora in care homes for older people, we suggest that the aliveness of companion robots is the result of a combination of four aspects: 1) material ingredients, 2) morphology, 3) animate movements guided by software programs and human operators as in Wizard of …
Who Controls Who? Embodied Control Within Human–Technology Choreographies
In this article we explore issues of embodied control that relate to current and future technologies in which body movements function as an instrument of control. Instead of just seeing ourselves in control, it is time to consider how these technologies actually control our moving bodies and transform our lived spaces. By shifting the focus from devices to choreographies among devices, we perform a theoretical analysis of the multidimensional aspects that reside within embodied interaction with technology. We suggest that it is beneficial to acknowledge and reformulate the phenomena of embodied control that go beyond the instrumental user-to-device control scheme. Drawing upon the phenomeno…