Designing poetic interaction in space

Abstract

An amount of research has risen growing concern of designing aesthetics of interaction in addition to function, usability, and pleasure of it. Beyond aesthetic interaction, we propose poetic interaction as a promising design genre. Based on Bachelard's phenomenological approach, we suggest that poetic interaction design begin with imagination and expression-making of both material and computational things. The challenges include how to design successful reverberation and admiration of poetic images while one interacts and reflects. Examining spatial metaphors, we classify poetic interaction into poetic space and interactive artifacts. With gestalt psychology, we present practical guides for designing poetic interaction. Two examples illustrate the relationship between poetic images and expression-making. Finally, we implement a design work, whisper, to explore the framework, as well as validate our findings via a qualitative experiment. Participants were positively impressed that interaction could deliver experience of poetic images with artifacts and space of implicit expression. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.