Embodied Interaction through Movement in a Course Work

Designing for and through movement is becoming increasingly important in human computer interaction, and it is widely accepted that the designers should develop their bodily skills and learn how to use the movement as design material. Yet, the reports on the education space around embodied interaction are scarce. We present an approach for teaching and designing embodied interaction in collaboration with contemporary dance choreographers. We describe a workshop, where after movement sessions, simple projects were implemented by the participants. The evaluation of projects and student feedback indicate that the four learning objectives, namely: 1) movement as a design material, 2) bodily skills needed for technological implementation, 3) movement qualities, and 4) practical projects, were attained for most of the participants. For some participants, however, the movement qualities were hard concepts to grasp and utilize in design, and this difficulty had an impact on all the other learning objectives. Further experiments with new tools, techniques, contexts, and guidelines are therefore required to highlight the importance of movement qualities in design.