Designing for Engaged Experience

I’m a student at James Cook University in Townsville, North Queensland, Australia, in the 3rd year of my PhD.

I love wandering around in the bush, in deserts, in just about anywhere that is not too built up. So I’m interested in how making-meaning occurs in natural places and why natural places seem particularly special to some people. A key part of my research was to design a method of gathering data about people’s experience in popular outdoor locations, in the moment of those experiences occuring. My hope is that understanding this might inspire the design of technologies that mediate our experiences of such places.

I’m going to bring some of the material I have accumulated during my research, including some of the tools I use and some of the egocentric point of view video I have of people explaining why particular sites are special to them.

During the workshop I hope that we’ll explore ways of collecting data from participants that allow us, as researchers, to get a bit closer to what it feels like to experience a place. I very much hope that we’ll discuss ways of making use of such data and the artefacts that result from analysis of that data and interaction with it. That discussion probably will also involve exploring ways of supporting the design process. I also expect we’ll try to develop some prototypes that make our thoughts more concrete and allow further discussion.