Bodystorming Exercise | Week 3

• 

• 

Today we began with a bodystorming exercise. As a refresher, we first encountered the term bodystorming while reading “Understanding contexts by being there: case studies in bodystorming” by Oulasvirta et al. (2003). Bodystorming was coined by Burns et al. (1994) and was defined as “reenacting everyday peoples’ performances and living with data in embodied ways by performance and improvisation” (p. 126).

What we need to remember about bodystorming is that while it is an excellent method for gaining first-hand experience, it occurs in a representative environment; you will always be an outsider looking in and trying to understand others. Regardless, it is important to learn to empathize with your user, as well as realize the important role participatory design plays.

As a quick reminder, we are interested in translating the feeling of the ceramics atelier to other places. Our bodystorming exercise was inspired both by the cultural probe we created for the patients of Ateliers Living Museum Wil, as well our project with them.

We created origami paper birds which we placed around the ZHdK. While bodystorming we considered the following questions:

1. How does it feel to place an object in an unusual environment?
2. Where do you place the object? Is it with intention?

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

We discovered many things, but maybe our most significant findings were the following: 1. Placing an object always has an intention/meaning behind it, and 2. Placing an object is like leaving a marker or legacy behind.

Sources

1. Oulasvirta, A., Kurvinen, E., & Kankainen, T. 2003. “Understanding contexts by being there: case studies in bodystorming”. In Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 7(2), 125­-134.