research-article

Fragile! Handle with Care: The Morse Things

Authors:

Omid AlemiAuthors Info & Claims

DIS '20: Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference

Pages 2149 - 2162

https://doi.org/10.1145/3357236.3395584

Published: 03 July 2020 Publication History

Abstract

Morse Things are Internet connected ceramic cups and bowls that communicate with each other in Morse Code. This ongoing research iteratively asks thing-centered questions of things and technology. A premise of the Morse Things is that any understanding of a thing or technology is unstable and arguably fragile. In this pictorial, we reflect on how we as researchers, in the course of doing research with the Morse Things, unexpectedly found ourselves literally entangled in the conceptual and physical fragility of the research. This pictorial describes our growing awareness of this instability, beginning with a kintsugi repair of a broken Morse Thing, our false confidence in our package design for shipping, and the difficulties to conceptualize the machine learning world that we ourselves created. We reflect on these experiences, and now see these as reminders of the inevitable fragility and instability of research on thing-perspectives.

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Cited By

Odom WBarnett SBrand NYoo MLin HWhite J(2024)Negotiating Conceptual and Practical Frictions in Making the Capra Short Film: Extending a Research through Design Artifact with VideoProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3660739(2866-2881)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643834.3660739
Rasmussen MPakanen MHeiselberg K(2024)A review of visual strategies in pictorialsProceedings of the 16th Conference on Creativity & Cognition10.1145/3635636.3656212(211-228)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3635636.3656212
Oogjes DDesjardins A(2024)A temporal vocabulary of Design Events for Research through DesignProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642560(1-12)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642560
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Index Terms

Fragile! Handle with Care: The Morse Things
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Interaction design

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

DIS '20: Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference

July 2020

2264 pages

ISBN:9781450369749

DOI:10.1145/3357236

General Chairs:
Ron Wakkary
Simon Fraser University, CA and Eindhoven University of Technology, NL
,
Kristina Andersen
Eindhoven University of Technology, NL
,
Program Chairs:
Will Odom
Simon Fraser University, CA
,
Audrey Desjardins
University of Washington, USA
,
Marianne Graves Petersen
Aarhus University, DK

Copyright © 2020 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].

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SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 03 July 2020

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Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant

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DIS '20

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SIGCHI

DIS '20: Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2020

July 6 - 10, 2020

Eindhoven, Netherlands

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Overall Acceptance Rate 1,158 of 4,684 submissions, 25%

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Cited By

Odom WBarnett SBrand NYoo MLin HWhite J(2024)Negotiating Conceptual and Practical Frictions in Making the Capra Short Film: Extending a Research through Design Artifact with VideoProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3660739(2866-2881)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643834.3660739
Rasmussen MPakanen MHeiselberg K(2024)A review of visual strategies in pictorialsProceedings of the 16th Conference on Creativity & Cognition10.1145/3635636.3656212(211-228)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3635636.3656212
Oogjes DDesjardins A(2024)A temporal vocabulary of Design Events for Research through DesignProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642560(1-12)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642560
Rieger S(2024)EffizienzOptimierung10.1007/978-3-662-67307-2_12(81-86)Online publication date: 26-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-67307-2_12
Gagnon-King DJones LNabil S(2023)Interactive Stained-Glass: Exploring a new design space of traditional hybrid crafts for novel fabrication methodsProceedings of the Seventeenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3569009.3572796(1-15)Online publication date: 26-Feb-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3569009.3572796
Desjardins ATihanyi TEl Shabazz-Thompson FCraft BSaimo J(2023)The Inner Ear: Capturing and Physicalizing Home VibrationsProceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3563657.3596070(594-607)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3563657.3596070
Oogjes DO'Brien MTurner HHennessy KMuntean RCamman M(2023)Transmediating Sky Blanket: tensions with a digital jacquard loomProceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3563657.3595965(371-386)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3563657.3595965
Rossmy BTerzimehić NDöring TBuschek DWiethoff A(2023)Point of no Undo: Irreversible Interactions as a Design StrategyProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581433(1-18)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581433
Zheng CHan BLiu XDevendorf LTan HYen C(2023)Crafting Interactive Circuits on Glazed Ceramic WareProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3580836(1-18)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3580836
Nicenboim IOogjes DBiggs HNam S(2023)Decentering Through Design: Bridging Posthuman Theory with More-than-Human Design PracticesHuman–Computer Interaction10.1080/07370024.2023.2283535(1-26)Online publication date: 27-Nov-2023
https://doi.org/10.1080/07370024.2023.2283535
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