These semi-structured interviews were conducted at the public exhibition of work generated from this research, An Exhibition of Process (2015). The purpose of these discussions was to capture an alternative perspective on my practice, situating my way of working amongst established praxis.
Several of these interviews are accompanied by a visual mapping exercise, which compared and contrasted the way that each practitioner saw their own process in relation to mine. Interviews that are discussed in the thesis accompanying this website are also included in the chapter-based navigation, for coherence. Identifying names and information have been removed.
Interaction design and media artist
Interaction design and HCI practitioner
HCI and media studies practitioner
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Interaction design and media artist
respondent: Is this yours? #00:00:06-3#
interviewer: This is. Um, okay, so what I might do is … I’ll show you this, because it’s kind of where I finished, and then talk about how I got there. And then, I wanted to ask a few questions about your process, um, particularly in comparison to the way that I sort of stepped through- #00:00:26-1#
respondent: Sure. #00:00:26-5#
interviewer: So… Um, I’d quite like to just get you to interact with it, without me saying too much. #00:00:37-2#
(entering dome space) #00:00:41-6#
respondent: (very long pause in conversation while pressing buttons) That sounds beautiful. #00:03:07-2#
interviewer: So I’ll explain how the system kind of works to you. Are you familiar with Gordon Pask? #00:03:13-2#
respondent: No. #00:03:14-1#
interviewer: He was a cybernetician. Um, sort of in around the early days of cybernetics, and he came up with a work called, “Musicolour,” which was a lighting system that responded to… sort of the output of performing musicians. And it at first would reflect what they were playing like maybe in melody or in tempo, and then it would sort assign colours to different notes and things like that, but at some point the system got bored and it stopped responding, mirroring, mapping the music, and started doing its own thing. And then, it was up to the performers to kind of try and re-engage the system, so whether they copied it or played something else to try and get its interest back. And that’s kind of where I’ve ended up with this. So, when you first start pressing any button, the entire tent will turn that colour. If you stay within the same panel for too long … Oh well, not for too long, but over time it becomes mapped to the position as well. Um, but if you continue on in that panel, at some point it’s no longer mapped at all. #00:04:26-7#
respondent: Oh, wow. #00:04:28-2#
interviewer: It becomes kind of random. What I found that was really helpful with that is that it kind of … When it stopped doing what it expected you to do, the kids really has to re-assess what… how they were controlling the system, and they usually vocalised that or did something physical that I could actually observe. Um, but they didn’t always kind of get to that point. I had this button on the computer, which I call the ‘sabotage’ button and I sabotaged the mapping. Um, and it’s a word that comes from educational psychology. It’s something that they actually do sometimes in autism um, to kind of try and uncover what exactly is going on beneath the surface, so if a kid is interacting in some way, they’re often not verbalising what they’re doing, so they’ll sabotage that play in an effort to kind of encourage them to verbalise it, or you know, some behaviour they can kind of look at. Um, so that’s, yeah, that’s pretty much where the system ended up. Um, and it was pretty interesting – I had one autistic boy who came in and immediately (pressing buttons) realised it was a scale and just went around, and around, and around, and then as soon as I pressed the sabotage button he just sat down, he talked to his mother, he’s like, “you press a button over there, I press a button here,” – so there’s no, there was no way to actually figure out the mapping once it’s sabotaged, but he was attempting to, which was really interesting. #00:06:15-7#
respondent: Hmm. (pause during button presses) So… um… what’s it for? (laughing) #00:06:39-3#
interviewer: At first, when I started this, I was interested in how interactivity can encourage social communication between – the child is in here with their parent, so really the system just facilitates their communication. #00:06:57-7#
respondent: Mmm, it gives them a challenge to collaborate on. #00:07:01-6#
interviewer: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, It became a lot more focused – like, social communication is a really big area, and there’s no way I could kind of come out with the data that would support it, so it became more about the way that control, or absence of control, um, motivates certain behaviours or externalises those internal processes I guess. That’s, yeah, that’s kind of what it’s all about. #00:07:33-8#
respondent: So it’s a research tool to learn – to collect data on how parents and children collaborate? #00:07:42-9#
interviewer: Yeah, yep. Um, particularly the way that the child instigates that. #00:07:50-2#
respondent: Uh huh. #00:07:50-7#
interviewer: Um, kind of cooperative play, cooperative interaction, um, joint attention. A lot of those things are quite problematic in autism. Um, the space itself is sort of just supposed to be a calming, welcoming, relaxing sort of space. #00:08:11-7#
respondent: Yeah. #00:08:12-3#
interviewer: When I first started designing it, I was hoping to work within a school. So it’s mobile, it fits in certain rooms and all that kind of thing, but that just never happened, so… #00:08:26-2#
respondent: Uh huh. And the music out there is synchronous, or is that just my confirmation bias? #00:08:37-1#
interviewer: The music is coming from that one over there, yeah. #00:08:39-5#
respondent: There was an orchestral thing that was… #00:08:41-1#
interviewer: The notes play from those buttons, yep. #00:08:44-2#
respondent: Yeah, but there seems like some orchestral soundtrack that was on in the background. Is that just coincidence? #00:08:48-9#
interviewer: Oh, yeah. That was coming from another work, yeah. #00:08:49-9#
respondent: Oh right, yeah, no – It felt like it was… #00:08:52-9#
interviewer: Okay, I might have to turn it down a little bit. #00:08:55-3#
respondent: Yeah, it felt good – I felt like, “Wow, that’s a really nice touch that you mixed in this kind of like-,” because, um, tonally, it was really like consonant with this. I thought, “Wow. Nice detail.” #00:09:10-7#
interviewer: (laughing) This one, the only sort of ambient sound is the water running, and the notes playing, are the sort of feedback. #00:09:21-6#
respondent: Mmm, yeah. #00:09:22-6#
interviewer: Um, alright, well, I’ll show you some of the stages- #00:09:30-0#
respondent: Begin the interrogation. (laughing) #00:09:32-1#
interviewer: Um, this is kind of where I started. This is my honours work. I did a series of devices for a girl with autism. Um, that was kind of just an investigation into the way that her sensory preferences really… So this was kind of like a catch-all device, had lots of different sensory inputs. #00:09:56-6#
respondent: RFID reader. Pressure sensor. #00:10:00-1#
interviewer: Yeah, and a proximity sensor. #00:10:02-1#
respondent: Uh huh. What’s that thing with the coils? #00:10:03-9#
interviewer: It’s EL wire – electroluminescent wire #00:10:07-1#
respondent: Oh, right, yep, yep, so it glows. #00:10:08-4#
interviewer: It turns on as the proximity sensor picks up, yeah. #00:10:12-5#
respondent: As you get closer to it. Cool, nice one. #00:10:13-3#
interviewer: Um, it ended up being sort of vibration that she was most interested in, so I created this 3 joystick device. I tried and separate whether it was the materiality or the vibration that she was into, and it was definitely the vibration, so in the end we created this change table, um, which came from a discussion with her mother who had trouble trying to change her. She was quite active, um, and so if both of those red corners were pressed at the same time it would vibrate, but it was too far apart for her to do on her own, so she had to like, engage with her mum in some way to get it to happen. Um, and that was, like as a kind of research project, it was quite successful. So, um, that’s what got me into the PhD and I was thinking more of a, uh, an environment that would work with different children. Um, so I sort of looked at multi-sensory rooms and Snoezelen rooms, um, and came up with the dome design. Um, and so what I’ve done on the floor is kind of like mapped out my process, so I started with the honours work and went into kind of material explorations, and I did this prototype model which was more of a, I guess a critical design, so the, I wanted to think about what it would be like to have autism, which obviously is impossible to emulate. But the headphones have little microphones on them, so wear them your sense of what you can hear is kind of, it’s a bit out of whack. And I wanted to kind of think about how that would change your interaction if you were kind of being overstimulated by different senses. #00:12:14-5#
respondent: Yeah, distracted. Yeah, cool. #00:12:15-7#
interviewer: The interaction itself was quite basic. At the time I was kind of thinking about how I could make it a narrative space, um, where these kind of lighting changes played out a story, but it, that just became way too complex for what I was after. So, I went into some interface design. The first one was basically a Reactable setup, so with the fiducials. Um, that was too abstract because there was no mapping out of space at all, um, and it wasn’t quick enough either, so it just, the connection between this object and the lighting wasn’t clear enough. Um, I ended up trying this kind of peg-in-hole type interface. It was slightly better, um, but again, I think it was… maybe it was just a tech issue, it just wasn’t quick enough… it had lighting problems coming in through the holes with the camera underneath, um, so that wasn’t hugely successful… #00:13:29-3#
respondent: So you’d recognise spots underneath with the camera. #00:13:31-5#
interviewer: Exactly, yeah. It was a hue camera, um, but if you put a red peg in a hole and the lights turned red, then red light was coming through the other holes. It just became this kind of feedback loop. It was really hard to manage. Um, so in the end, I came up with the model within a model. And the immediacy of those buttons is, I think, what makes that successful. The, it being a dome shape, I think, isn’t so successful, because you’re kind of inside the object you’re looking at. It was kind of a weird… #00:14:12-8#
respondent: Yeah, I like that. #00:14:13-5#
interviewer: I love it as well. #00:14:14-8#
respondent: It’s like a fairy tale. #00:14:15-3#
interviewer: (laughing) Um, but a lot of people didn’t – even adults, when I was just sort of testing it out, they didn’t understand the relationship. #00:14:22-2#
respondent: Wow, that’s amazing! It’s literally like one-to-one. Like, it’s, you couldn’t make it clearer. (laughing) #00:14:31-2#
interviewer: I thought so, but I had asked people – like, even therapists – I brought in psychologists, and they would say yeah, what do they call it? An igloo? They called it, the environment igloo, but they just thought of it as an object, not as a representation of the space. #00:14:46-6#
respondent: Wow. Goodness. There you go – neurodiversity. (laughing) #00:14:51-2#
interviewer: (laughing) Yeah. Again, this is the sort of model I’m working with at the moment. It’s a bit of a mash-up of – this is a cybernetic system of um, a feedback system within another, so this would be the, the um, sort of computer system, this would be the human system, and I’m interested in how their response to goal setting changes when you sabotage their kind of way of measuring the output. This is, um, are you familiar with activity theory? #00:15:31-0#
respondent: Mmm, only vaguely. #00:15:32-7#
interviewer: Okay. Um, so, it’s got a very long history from psychology. Um, and this is just a very small part of it. But basically the subject, which in this case is a person, in looking at the object, which is actually the objective – it’s not a very good term, “object” – um, their motivation is, “How do I make the object I’m sort of looking towards become something else?”. Um, and that’s kind of how I’m connecting these two models. What’s interesting from that theory is something called, “the breakdown”. So if, I’m, it comes into HCI sometimes when people are looking at interfaces, and, and if something doesn’t work out the way they expect it to, the way that they – sort of subconscious actions become conscious to kind of figure out what, why it didn’t work as I expected. #00:16:30-2#
respondent: Right. What would be an example of that? #00:16:31-7#
interviewer: Ahh, the example they often use is something like driving a car. So the actions become something like you learn – your body learns them until something goes wrong, like maybe you’re in an accident or like, nearly hit something, and you kind of suddenly realise where your hands are and how you’re moving all your limbs. Um, and that’s a little bit of what I’m trying to sort of induce through the sabotage. It’s kind of like a breakdown of their interaction. #00:17:05-2#
respondent: So um, and then what feedback have you had from the psychological researchers, in terms of the um, insights they gained through the sabotage? #00:17:22-6#
interviewer: The sabotage, talking to the therapists about sabotage, I haven’t done yet, so I’ll speak to them in the same way I’m speaking to you. Um, I interviewed therapists just in that space, and I was interested in how it would be used within their practice, so didn’t kind of look at my longer process. But I’ll have a couple of them next week, so that’ll be interesting. Just talking about the idea of sabotage with them, it’s um, particularly with occupational therapists, it’s a bit contentious. Some don’t like it, and some do. I like the idea. The word is a bit provocative, um, but maybe it’s not the right word. (pause) This is kind of what I saw when the studies were happening. So we’ve got 3 cameras in there, and just for the sake of exhibition I made a sabotage button. (laughing) #00:18:25-9#
respondent: That’s the sabotage button, yeah. Uh huh. Cool. #00:18:31-9#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:18:33-2#
respondent: Where is that other music coming from? #00:18:37-7#
interviewer: From this one. #00:18:38-6#
respondent: Oh, from in here? #00:18:39-1#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:18:39-4#
respondent: (pause) It’s a great, um, mode. What key is it in or something? It’s got a great musicality. #00:18:56-3#
interviewer: I can’t remember. It’s so long since I, uh… #00:18:58-8#
respondent: Happy? Sad? #00:18:59-9#
interviewer: It all feels a bit melancholy. #00:19:02-0#
respondent: (laughing) I love it. #00:19:04-4#
interviewer: Yeah. (pause) All right, I’m going to check my questions for you. So… what role do participants play in your research? #00:19:22-5#
respondent: Um, I kind of, in some ways they’re collaborators. So, um, the work really only has meaning through the participation of you know, people in the community in it. So it’s a way that the work becomes real, through people’s interactions and experiences of it, of the work. Um, and then, yeah, I guess I think of my work as a way of um, enabling new interpretations of ourselves, our relationship to technology, our relationship to our body, how we imagine our body, or you know, mind-body connections. #00:20:20-8#
interviewer: What, um, where does, does participant feedback come in to your process? Do you take that… #00:20:29-1#
respondent: The, um, I mean, since finishing my doctorate where the data wasn’t there to validate certain questions, I do interviews as a way of um, facilitating this process of reflection. So for me, it’s like the works are opportunities, and kind of provocations or invitations to um, experience connections between things that may normally, habitually, seem disconnected. Um, and then, the opportunity to reflect on that experience it’s a way – it’s like narrative therapy, in the sense that you build this new narrative around a very unfamiliar or novel experience, and then it embeds it. #00:21:10-7#
interviewer: Do you have an example that might seem disconnected? #00:21:16-3#
respondent: Seem dis… oh well, I guess people would think that their thoughts and their physiology can seem disconnected a lot of the time. Um, and then, when they see, for example they start, um… They, in this case of this recent stuff I’m doing with brain waves, when they realise that they can produce this signal when they really mentally quiet, and not thinking of things, and then they start thinking of things and it changes. It’s just like, “But I was just thinking, and thinking is supposed to be not-physical”, but it’s obviously physical enough to pick it up. And then so, just dealing with that, not at a conceptual level, but at an interactive level, where you’re doing these little micro-experiments in your brain and hearing the differences, um, yeah, that’s one of those situations where it’s very much the experiment and um, the challenge, or provocation, in a way, and then as people kind of like, resolve that you know, in their experience of the work it starts to become, “Okay, this is it.” Um, it’s just really for me, it’s about, then, all of these associations come up. Um, and that’s yeah, that’s kind of why I make the work really. It’s just that it can facilitate these new ways of connecting. Um, yeah. So the really, it’s a social process, and I use the audience participation and interviews as a way to just um, amplify that thing that’s already happening in the interaction itself. #00:22:56-7#
interviewer: So do you see the physical artefacts as a kind of end point, or more of a starting point to have these discussions with people? #00:23:07-6#
respondent: Mmm. (pause) The discussions aren’t the end point. Like, the, they’re just a pretty equal part of it. So the talking about it, the thinking about it, but also just the physical experience of the work, the, they’re on equal footing. You can’t have one without the other. But the direct experience they have of the art work, of the lights, the sounds, themselves in that, that relationship, that’s pretty fundamental. Yeah, yep. Otherwise it’s just intellectualising. #00:23:44-6#
interviewer: Yep. (long pause) Um… with, I guess with so much emphasis on their experience and… that feedback, how do you, or do you, even try to measure success of a project? Or even an endpoint of a project? #00:24:17-4#
respondent: Um, when I was doing my doctoral research, I had specific experiential goals in terms of the kinds of experiences and the kinds of reflections that I wanted people to have. And then so I would then do this research and see how that aligned. And then sometimes that would… some things would come up. I said, “I want the experience to be meaningful,” but that’s not something that people can like, respond to immediately. So that was, I had to really think about, “Well, what is meaning? And how do I think about meaning?” So, it was really very useful work in terms of like, re-framing the scope of what you can do with this kind of work and the varieties of meaning that come out of it. Um, so… what was your question again there? I feel like there was another part that I wanted to answer… #00:25:10-8#
interviewer: Just whether there’s an endpoint or a measurement of success? #00:25:13-6#
respondent: Yeah, the measurement of success for me is if I – when I’m hearing people having that, talking about their experience when they’re coming out of it, when I’m looking at the kind of imagery they’re generating from the experience, like when I do the, get them to create maps or drawings. Um, if I, yeah – the measure of success for me is that they’re involved in some kind of process of, um, reflection and experimentation, and usually they are. So, um… I guess, then, if you’re going to talk about success or failure, then I would have to think about situations where it fails. Um… And for me, the situations I find least satisfying is where there’s no human interaction um, in terms of – It’s just like, the show in the galley, where it’s just the iPads there and you just walk up to it. I… find it challenging, you know. I get asked to show that kind of work, and I find it un-rewarding and it’s um, socially really unfocused (laughing), whereas when you have a hosted situation this, there’s a real focusing of attention that I think is really important to the work. Yeah. But the, do I conduct the interviews to find out if it’s working or failing? That’s not really the point. I think the point is really to um, ahh, again, it’s providing an environment where people can really reflect, you know. And the interview and the discussion is just an opportunity to extend that and, and nurture that process of inquiry and reflection. #00:27:03-9#
interviewer: Mmm hmm. What way then does one project inform the next? Do you kind of look for something that’s not kind of fully explored or um, do you start things from scratch? #00:27:25-7#
respondent: I guess, um, partially it’s like born out of – one project might either be a development and a refinement of a previous work, or it might be arising from a frustration, yeah? So, uhh, I was doing those, the Cardiomorphology with the circles for a few years and I thought, “Okay, I want something different to this”, like, for one type of visualisation thing, so I then started exploring these like all-over textures with the Heart Library Project. And that Heart Library Project was also saying, “Oh wow, I’ve done that work with interviewing the audience as part of my research. Now, that was so interesting I want to now experiment with bringing that into the actual practice”, and the audience experience is an integral thing. And then, the major big shift that came then was then the new work with brain waves, and again, that was like well, I couldn’t do that at the time, but um, now I’m bringing it into the work. And then it was like, I was really interested in the challenge of what it would be to create interactions primarily with sound, because people have to have their eyes closed. So how do they progress, one to the other? I don’t know. I mean I, I’ve been working in this area for like about 13 years, and maybe the past 5 years I’ve been wanting to do something around geography and not about the body, but that’s really slow, a really slow process. #00:29:01-1#
interviewer: Just to kind of totally change tack, or…? #00:29:04-9#
respondent: To… no, again, again, it comes from a sense of like, oh I feel a sense of frustration or limitation, and I feel like I need to kind of address the opposite of things sometimes. So, um, there’s such a… in western society we think of the individual as the thing, and our sense of identity is so poorly developed in relationship to its connection with wider systems, so I thought really I wanted to explore geography um, and spatial representation as a way to actually look at those limitations of um, you know, how we see ourselves embodied within wider systems. #00:29:48-6#
interviewer: Okay. Mmm, it sounds interesting. #00:29:51-7#
respondent: Yeah, it just takes a long time. #00:29:54-1#
interviewer: For what reason, other things going on? #00:29:58-3#
respondent: Umm, just because you’ve already got obligations to do certain works and projects, and you want to see them through, and each project you know, it could take 10 years, you know. Um, so you keep lots of things on the go, and you can’t just suddenly drop everything and be like, “Okay, I’m doing geography now,” but um, because you care about all of those other projects as well. Yeah. #00:30:18-6#
interviewer: Okay. Um, I’ve got one more strange question for you. #00:30:27-5#
respondent: A strange question, great. #00:30:29-3#
interviewer: Yeah. So I mapped out how I kind think my process goes on the floor, I guess from early investigations to material studies, prototypes, iterative design, and this is the yet to be finished ahh, interview transcripts. So I was wondering if you would be able to map out on the floor with this chalk something similar, with your own process in mind. #00:30:55-9#
respondent: Right, wow. To the extent that my process aligns with these things I can see here? #00:31:04-1#
interviewer: Ahh, well if they don’t, it would be interesting to hear that as well. #00:31:07-6#
respondent: Mmm. (pause) So my process, wow. Okay, what is my process? (pause) Well, um, I guess the first thing is … it starts with a kind of um… Something somewhere between an intuitive yearning or a desire for a way that things could be connected, yeah? So it would be like, “What if there was a music that was like the sound of my mind or the sound of my mental activity?” #00:31:50-6#
interviewer: Okay, so it’s a bit like a thought bubble somewhere? #00:31:52-9#
respondent: Yeah, yeah, but it’s a feeling bubble really. #00:31:54-9#
interviewer: (drawing thought bubble on ground) Okay. #00:31:59-8#
respondent: Um, and then, I start thinking about, “Okay, well what’s the, what would be the technical foundation for this?” So um, then I start researching the technologies, and hardware, and software. #00:32:18-9#
interviewer: Okay, I’d probably, so that’s material studies? #00:32:21-1#
respondent: Mmm hmm. And then, um… From there, I start building prototypes. #00:32:33-5#
interviewer: Ahh, would these be prototypes that a participant would use? #00:32:39-1#
respondent: Umm, they’re primarily just me … The first stage is me just getting something to work. So I’ll collaborate with an engineer or a you know, a software developer and say, “Can you get this thing to talk to my other tools and processes?” And… then… in the process… I guess simultaneous to that process, I’m also just networking with um, institutions, planting a seed, that I’m doing particular research in a particular area. Um and because I’m looking for them to host and to um, yeah, help facilitate that research. #00:33:32-1#
interviewer: That would be parallel with this? #00:33:34-9#
respondent: Yeah. Yeah, so like at the moment I’m planting lots of seeds with people that I’m interested in geography. #00:33:40-8#
interviewer: Institutions (drawing on ground) #00:33:43-5#
respondent: Mmm hmm. Because they eventually become collaborators, in the sense that they host and produce event – prototyping events, and then full-blown public exhibitions. So involving them in the conversation. Ahh, then, once I get prototyping to a certain level, then I’ll do a prototype exhibition open to the public. And it’s low-key. (laughing) Just a small thing in a small venue usually, just to test out the ideas. And if nothing else, it’s there logistically also to drive you know, myself and my production team to getting something across the line. #00:34:28-4#
interviewer: Okay, that’s… What’re we going to do … Painting. (drawing on ground) Exhibition, yeah? #00:34:39-7#
respondent: Yeah. Um and then, from there … That brings the work to a certain level of um, cohesiveness, in the sense that it can run all day. Um, it embodies certain you know, compositional concepts and things like that. Um, and then really, you have a few of those prototyping exhibitions. And each time it’s exhibited, I’m refining it. #00:35:15-7#
interviewer: (drawing on ground) #00:35:17-6#
respondent: Yep. And then, then what happens? (pause) At a certain point it kind of matures, but I always keep tinkering with it, so every time that I have an opportunity to exhibit at these institution it’s usually always like- #00:35:39-9#
interviewer: So that becomes kind of iterative design? #00:35:42-7#
respondent: Yeah, iterative, yep. But it kind of um, it solidifies at a certain point. Umm… and then, as that’s happening I guess simultaneously new works are being developed. #00:36:00-2#
interviewer: For… for work with participants? #00:36:09-6#
respondent: Mmm hmm. It’s all, it’s all with participants. #00:36:14-1#
interviewer: So I’ve been trying to separate the gallery context from the experiment, is there- #00:36:23-3#
respondent: There’s no separation. I do the experiments in galleries, yeah. So , I mean being at an institution like this it’s fairly new, and I guess that being in a place like this gives me the opportunity to set experiments up, you know, in a way that’s not called an exhibition, but previous to that I have just like, I have exhibitions with galleries and I call them, “laboratories.” (laughing) #00:36:50-8#
interviewer: (pause) Okay, so then I guess the feedback comes- #00:36:58-6#
respondent: The feedback is happening every time I prototype it, beyond getting it working in my studio, that’s where the feedback is coming in. And in that process, that exhibition, it’s conversations. I’m there physically with people listening to them talk about their experience. #00:37:17-9#
interviewer: (pause) Okay, good. That’s interesting. #00:37:31-4#
respondent: (laughing) #00:37:32-9#
interviewer: This was John’s idea. I really like it. #00:37:34-9#
respondent: Uh huh. #00:37:35-6#
interviewer: So I’ll end up with conversations with people, but also a mapping of their process to compare to mine. #00:37:44-8#
respondent: Yep. I mean the thing I’m curious about with your research here is um, ahh, where does this go after a PhD? #00:37:59-8#
interviewer: I, I’d really like to work on a larger scale with psychologists and people who can get some kind of data out of, out of what I’m doing. Whether they’re interested or not kind of remains to be seen. I think they’ve sort of had their doubts when I approached them early on about me pulling this off, um, but as it’s gone along people have kind of been more and more interested. We’ve got an autism research group here, and David Silvera is starting to make some contacts with psychology at main campus and some other institutions. So, um, yeah, we’ll see where that goes. #00:38:45-8#
respondent: Mmm. Cause it’s like the primary audience – it’s not an even an audience – the primary users for this seems to be like psychological researchers, in terms of like um, gathering data on how um, parents and children… #00:39:05-1#
interviewer: Yeah, I mean that… #00:39:06-4#
respondent: …problem solve. #00:39:07-5#
interviewer: …that’s where I was coming from, but I’d just really like everyone’s responses to this, just in an interaction design kind of an experience. It’s, I find that really nice to watch how everyone responds to the change in the way that that system works, um… but it was developed with autistic children in mind. #00:39:33-8#
respondent: Yep. (pause) But it’s very much a laboratory. Um, that’s its home. #00:39:46-2#
interviewer: Yep. I did want to take into like, in situ into schools and get kind of that real world experience, but um, yeah, for a bunch of reasons it didn’t happen. #00:40:01-7#
respondent: But I don’t think it can, it can’t work in that real world situation because they’re not in a position where they undertake those experiments with children. #00:40:10-2#
interviewer: Umm, I guess it depends on how you frame it. If it was just a place for them to come, like a soothing space for them to come through, they kind of do do that. But I suppose me, sitting at the other end of it- #00:40:24-3#
respondent: With the sabotage button. (laughing) #00:40:26-2#
interviewer: …with the sabotage button, like tracking all of their presses and stuff, it changes. #00:40:31-1#
respondent: To me, I think that if you took, if you modified the sabotage element and it wasn’t so much sabotage, but just like um, things get progressively more complex in the mappings, um, that they’re still essentially solvable um, and there’s still underlying logics underneath it, then there’s still the possibility that through cooperation between the parent and child, or child and child, that can then solve it. #00:41:02-4#
interviewer: That’s ultimately where I would have liked to have taken it. That’s kind of the more Pask ‘Musicolour’ end, but I just ran out of time really. #00:41:11-6#
respondent: Yeah, yep, yep. #00:41:13-3#
interviewer: Um and that’s probably some logic that I’d need help with as well. #00:41:19-2#
respondent: But I think the idea of interfaces that um, can only be operated through cooperation is really interesting. I think that’s really powerful. Um and then, looking at how you design the interface, so you know, how that cooperation is embodied in terms of different actions and gestures, and things like that, is really interesting. #00:41:42-2#
interviewer: Yeah. It’s interesting to see how adults approach it, versus children. I mean I’ve, my son’s 18 months and he just mashes buttons. That’s kind of an extreme example, but adults always look for combinations and patterns across the object. They don’t look at buttons individually. And I kind of noticed you doing it as well, looking at it like, “If I press two red buttons together, what happens?” Um, I think kids don’t seem to do that, so I guess there’s some sort of developmental stage. #00:42:12-2#
respondent: Yeah, yeah. And so if you started looking at those patterns as mapped to developmental stages, and then like sequence them somehow or figure out how you transition … What triggers a transition. #00:42:26-8#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:42:28-3#
respondent: (pause) But yeah, it feels really nice in there. #00:42:35-7#
interviewer: Yeah, it’s just a really relaxing space. I’ve had quite a few people comment on that, um, parents of autistic kids, which is really nice to know that that works, just on a, I guess at a material level. #00:42:51-8#
respondent: Yeah. What was that series that was on TV recently … The Prime Minister’s Husband with um, I think, Emma Thompson and one of the guys who was Doctor Who for a while, but basically it’s two politicians and one of the children is autistic, and he has this tent in his bedroom that he climbs into and he retreats into his tent, and like you have to kind of put the food there for him to come and get … He’ll reach out of the tent and go back in, and that’s like his little safe space, which is interesting. #00:43:24-4#
interviewer: Yeah. It’s, I mean everyone is so different. Um, it was a bit of unknown whether they’d feel claustrophobic or secure by the size of the space, but it seems to sit in between those two things. #00:43:40-5#
respondent: Yeah. No the lights are beautiful. #00:43:42-9#
interviewer: (pause) Cool. All right. I might switch this off. #00:43:51-0#
respondent: Great. Thank you. #00:43:51-3#
—
Body-focused HCI practitioner
respondent: Is this on? #00:00:08-9#
interviewer: Yeah, should be. I’ll just double-check. #00:00:11-9#
respondent: Hello. Am I recording? #00:00:14-8#
interviewer: Yep. So… I kinda aim to be about 20 minutes, the interview. Um, if we go over it doesn’t really matter. The way that I’ve structured it so far, is to kinda talk through my process of getting to this point, which is like what the exhibition is all about, just laying out my process. And then I want to ask a few questions about your process kind of, and how that compares to mine. And, yeah. That’s about it. #00:00:44-9#
respondent: Mmm, oh, okay, great. #00:00:47-1#
interviewer: Um, so it’s probably easiest to start by showing you where I ended up, which is with this dome space. Um, it’s, uhh, an environment for… I developed it with autistic children in mind, young autistic children. And I have done observational studies with 3 to 5 year old autistic children and neurotypical children in the space. And they come in here with their parent, which just happened to always be a mother. Um, and the idea of the space is to facilitate social interaction between the parent and the child. So the technology is just there to sort of trigger some sort of connection between the two. #00:01:39-1#
respondent: Mmm hmm. (pause) What does this one do? (referring to interface) #00:01:52-6#
interviewer: Actually, I’m quite interested to see how people would interact with it before I tell them how it works. #00:01:57-6#
respondent: Okay. (pause) For some reason the little doorway, like a mouse hole. (touching interface) Igloo things. I just want to put my hand in that hole. (laughing) I will. (laughing) Oh, okay. (pause) For some reason I’m attracted towards the hole rather than the buttons. #00:02:22-2#
interviewer: Okay. #00:02:22-4#
respondent: I wonder why that was. (long pause while pressing buttons) What does this one do? Oop! #00:02:34-9#
respondent: (very long pause in conversation, continues pressing buttons) #00:03:27-4#
respondent: Mmm, reminds me of a lullaby. It is quite beautiful, those lights. (pause, pressing buttons) Will you play with me? (laughing) #00:03:52-3#
interviewer: I’ll tell you how it’s programmed to work. So, um, I did a couple of other versions of the interface, which I’ll talk about in a sec. But they, they were quite, the way that they controlled the lighting was very abstract. And so, what I’ve tried to do with this is to make it really clear, the relationship between the interaction and the response to the space. So, the children, particularly being young children, they get a sense of their control. And so when they first press a button, the entire tent changes to be that colour. #00:04:25-0#
respondent: Right. #00:04:26-6#
interviewer: Um, and there’s only 3 options: red, yellow, and green. And it doesn’t matter which button you press, it will always start by lighting the whole tent. But if you stay within the same panel, (pressing buttons) it will eventually become mapped to that panel. #00:04:40-8#
respondent: Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah, I did notice there was less light. #00:04:43-5#
interviewer: So the mapping becomes more complex. Um, I did find that that relationship seemed to be too complex for most people to get, even adults. Um, but the idea was that if they remain the same place, so repetition and repeated behaviours are, well, problematic for autistic children. #00:05:08-6#
respondent: Yeah. #00:05:09-0#
interviewer: If they continue on, it, the mapping stops completely. #00:05:13-2#
respondent: Oh, right, it starts to get lessened. #00:05:15-5#
interviewer: So, it’s, mapping is totally removed and the idea with that comes from educational psychology and something that they call sabotage. So taking away that control once it’s been established to try and get them to show some sort of behaviour. So the best example I’ve had of it, was a boy who came in, an autistic boy, and he just walked around the tent doing this. He immediately figured out it was scale and he went around and around and around. #00:05:47-7#
respondent: Yeah. #00:05:48-5#
interviewer: And I’ve got like the sabotage switch on the computer, so I sabotaged that control and he immediately sat down and he said to his mother, like, ”Can you try that” or “Can you help me?”. And so it was totally obvious that he was trying to get back that and, like vocalising, I guess, internal sort of thoughts, which was really interesting. Even when I gave him back control, he continued that type of interaction, rather than going back to repetition. #00:06:21-6#
respondent: Just a kind of repetitive behaviour. #00:06:22-4#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:06:22-9#
respondent: How interesting. So then you’ve, rather doing it from the… manually, you’ve built it into the logic somehow? #00:06:32-0#
interviewer: Yeah, it’s built into the logic, um, but if they don’t quite ever get there themselves I have the ability to sabotage them externally. #00:06:40-0#
respondent: Yeah, right. #00:06:40-6#
interviewer: So I’ve got cameras in here, which are used for filming the studies and I observe them from outside the space. #00:06:47-9#
respondent: Right. Okay. And so are you thinking that this be something you could use on an ongoing basis or only when parents and children are around um, other kinds of settings? #00:07:00-2#
interviewer: Um, I, well my honours work… um, actually I’ll talk you through how I got here. (leaving dome space) I did a project for Honours which worked with an autism institution that I was hoping to work with again for PhD, but for a bunch of reasons it didn’t happen. So when I started this, I built it with um, a school in mind, um, so it’s mobile, it fits within the school room. Um, it’s definitely a prototype, but it was designed to be packed up and moved from place to place. #00:07:44-7#
respondent: Yeah. Yeah. #00:07:45-2#
interviewer: And, so I kind of built it with the idea of either child and parent or child and teacher, in there. And I really wanted to sort of see how interactivity facilitates that kind of cooperative and social kind of communication. #00:08:05-3#
respondent: So not between the children themselves, but between an adult and a child? #00:08:11-9#
interviewer: I hadn’t got to that place myself, but I did interview therapists in there and they thought that it would be interesting to work with a group. Um, I never, I only had a small group of participants, so I didn’t quite get to that stage. But it would be interesting to have a group within there for sure. #00:08:31-2#
respondent: Yeah, I’m just wondering, just, yeah, obviously the child and the parents’ behaviours or reasoning would be very different or their intention behind what they’re doing. #00:08:40-5#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:08:41-1#
respondent: I can imagine, so it’d be interested to see what comes out if you have children doing it themselves. #00:08:47-7#
interviewer: I had that parent, child relationship going, because um, not being a therapist or psychologist, I thought that they have the best insight to the child. So I interviewed them afterwards to give me that kind of feedback. #00:09:01-1#
respondent: Oh right, yeah. #00:09:01-8#
interviewer: Um, things that I probably wouldn’t have spotted. Um, but yeah, it’d be great to continue this on, on a larger scale, working with psychologists and other people who could give me that kind of information and data. #00:09:19-5#
respondent: And so did you um, how long does someone, one like parent, child stay in there? And just do like one session and then… #00:09:29-2#
interviewer: It was totally self-directed. #00:09:30-5#
respondent: Yeah. #00:09:30-8#
interviewer: Um, usually, they’d be in there between 10 and 20 minutes, um, and they came back 3 times for the 3 iterations of the interface. #00:09:41-3#
respondent: All right, okay. #00:09:42-5#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:09:43-5#
respondent: These are previous iteration? #00:09:44-6#
interviewer: Yeah. The first one, I don’t know if you’ve seen the Reactable? #00:09:47-9#
respondent: Mmm. Mmm hmm. #00:09:49-5#
interviewer: It’s basically that. The problem with that was there was no mapping at all between the space and the surface. And it was way too abstract to kind of make the connection. #00:09:58-9#
respondent: Mmm. #00:09:59-8#
interviewer: So I moved on to this like, child peg-in-hole type interface. And, it, there was some evidence that they, especially were making colour connections, but it was technically problematic because of the way the holes let light in. So if you put a red peg in and red light came in, it would think that the red peg over there and it was a bit troublesome. #00:10:26-9#
respondent: Yeah, right. It was also making light and sound effects? #00:10:29-7#
interviewer: Yeah. I mean the response of the space worked basically the same way with each of these interfaces. #00:10:36-0#
respondent: Oh, okay. #00:10:37-8#
interviewer: Although, with these 2 you could light each light individually. So on each panel there’s 3 lights, and you could have say red, green and yellow. Where as this one, there’s only one colour per panel. #00:10:52-0#
respondent: Oh right, right. #00:10:53-2#
interviewer: I simplified that down as well. #00:10:55-2#
respondent: Yeah… (looking at flow diagram) So this is the logic? #00:11:06-3#
interviewer: Yeah. That was the way I was thinking through… I had somebody help me with the programming at one point. And trying to communicate what I was after to him, it was quite an interesting process. #00:11:18-8#
respondent: Okay. So this diagram resulted? #00:11:21-0#
interviewer: Yeah. Basically a data flow. #00:11:23-5#
respondent: Like a flow diagram. #00:11:24-9#
interviewer: Yeah… (pause) I was sort of thinking about the way a misbehaviour comes in and the motivation for the person inside the space. #00:11:39-9#
respondent: So it’s more sort of an exploratory system? Like, it’s not like you’re sort of aiming to get something in particular, is it? #00:11:51-5#
interviewer: Umm, I wouldn’t have thought so, but the autistic children particularly wanted… Like, they were looking for patterns, so they might you know, make little yellow and all red. I saw that a lot. #00:12:07-8#
respondent: Right. Then there’s the option is to disrupt the pattern once you’ve established it. #00:12:17-0#
interviewer: Yep. #00:12:17-7#
respondent: Which is synchronous with your, what did you call it, sabotage? #00:12:22-1#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:12:22-6#
respondent: Yeah, right. Okay. Oh that’s interesting. Yeah, that’s like – cause, um, one of the areas I’m interested in is defamiliarising and making strange but with um, movement, patterns. So from the sort of dance training we’ll do, we do a lot of that kind of stuff. Where, um, yeah, you may have a particular way of moving or a habitual way of doing something and then you try and actually put a disruption in there. #00:12:50-6#
interviewer: Yep. #00:12:50-9#
respondent: Yeah, or an intervention, so same sort of thing I guess. #00:12:53-2#
interviewer: Yeah, that actually – have you ever looked at activity theory? #00:12:56-2#
respondent: Activity theory? #00:12:57-9#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:12:58-3#
respondent: Only very briefly. #00:13:00-2#
interviewer: I, I’m only looking at the very small part of it, but there’s this idea, when it was brought into HCI about the breakdown, so that like when something doesn’t work the way that you expect, the subconscious kind of becomes conscious to sort of, you know “What Went wrong? Why? How do I kind of make it work?” And that’s, that breakdown is what I’m trying to trigger with the sabotage. #00:13:28-2#
respondent: Oh, okay, okay. That’s something that’s very much in Heidegger’s theories of disappearance, aren’t they? #00:13:34-7#
interviewer: Yep, yep. #00:13:35-9#
respondent: Yeah, which, also, yeah, cause I, some of the theoretical work I do is looking at habit as well and what’s an awareness and habit and stuff like that. Things that just happen automatically, and habitually, and then what can you actually intervene in that particular pattern. Yeah, or use the breakdown creatively? Is that what you’re trying to do here? #00:14:05-9#
interviewer: Um, yeah, I use it to expose the I guess, ahh, like make the implicit explicit? Bring, give me something to sort of observe, whether it’s an action or a verbalisation. #00:14:26-4#
respondent: So that was part of your research approach in terms of studying this? Or that’s also in the system as a way of actually creating… um, different events, opportunities? #00:14:42-0#
interviewer: Um, it’s in the system in that I’m kind of using it as being analogous to disturb – an external disturbance into the environment. So this is a cybernetic system. (referring to system model on ground) Um, and so, if this is the system being the tent, and this is the system being the person, kind of looking at what the output of the space is, setting their goal onto the space. If that output is sabotaged, how does that change the way that they respond and the way that they I guess interact again? Um… So yeah, it comes in I guess through the system design and the observation or the analysis. #00:15:39-9#
respondent: Interesting, but this bit’s, which bits, so that’s from activity theory? #00:15:44-8#
interviewer: Yep. And this is from cyber – well, a basic cybernetic system. #00:15:47-9#
respondent: Yeah, but you’ve brought them together. #00:15:49-2#
interviewer: Yeah, I’m trying to connect the two. I’m not sure if I’ve done that totally successfully yet, but that’s where I’m playing around at the moment. #00:15:59-1#
respondent: Mmm. So what was the key thing again in this one? This was, um, the way you’re using it. #00:16:07-2#
interviewer: So the breakdown. The subject being a person, object is kind of objective. Um, and they want to change the current state of whatever they’re focusing their attention on, to something else. And the way or how they do that is done through an activity and actions and operations make connectivity. Operation side, of kind of the I guess subconscious is not a great word, but there’s an example of driving a car so kind of your actions of driving a car become I guess like body memory almost, until something goes wrong. So, like maybe a dog runs out in the road, and suddenly you’re very aware of all of the movements that you make to drive a car. Um, so all those operations become actions. #00:17:06-1#
respondent: Oh, so this is to do with awareness? Conscious awareness of things? #00:17:15-9#
interviewer: Yeah, that’s the breakdown. #00:17:17-1#
respondent: That thing there? #00:17:17-7#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:17:18-2#
respondent: All right. (pause) Mmm. So not so much chance operations, but… did you go back and sort of look at the various, or analyse the various kinds of breakdown that would tend to happen in here and then see whether you could leverage those or exploit them to some degree? #00:17:49-1#
interviewer: The only exploitation I’ve had is the kind of ability to externally – this is my sabotage button – (pressing button) #00:17:57-9#
respondent: (laughing) Great. #00:18:01-2#
interviewer: So that I could externally trigger that sabotage. So what I need to do is go back through all that video and look at more closely how they responded, how they changed their interaction. There was like large changes, like the boy who sat down. But yeah, I need to go back through everything now. #00:18:19-3#
respondent: Okay. #00:18:20-4#
interviewer: Dig a bit deeper. #00:18:22-0#
respondent: Yeah, cause it’s somewhat analogous just to I guess game player or any kind of interaction where you… ahh, or I guess with game, with the kind of game play theory isn’t that what you need to have some level of entry pint and challenge, but you don’t want to make it too great. Otherwise people would get frustrated, and bored, and that kind of stuff. Interesting so that you have to establish some sense of agency. #00:18:48-8#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:18:50-7#
respondent: Yeah, but then when you did make that disruption, are you um… Do you have like a number of set patterns or something, or states that you oscillate between, or is it… When you did that, what did it do it sort of just went back? #00:19:05-3#
interviewer: When it’s sabotaged, there’s no mapping at all. It’s essentially random. #00:19:10-7#
respondent: Does it do anything? Oh, random? Okay. Oh I see, right. #00:19:13-6#
interviewer: So there’s no way to control it, in any sort of meaningful way. #00:19:17-6#
respondent: Oh, okay, so you don’t know which button’s going to trigger what. #00:19:20-1#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:19:20-4#
respondent: Yeah. Mmm. So it’s more like there’s a disorientation. #00:19:24-0#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:19:25-0#
respondent: That’s nasty. (laughing) #00:19:27-0#
interviewer: I would have loved to kind of get it to the point where they could somehow re-engaged the system. Um, but I just ran out of time. #00:19:35-8#
respondent: Yeah, because it’s like that sort of… Yeah, I mean, yeah. I can’t imagine it, well not a computer crash, but certainly yeah, it’s gone a bit ballistic. (laughing) And then, yeah, it’s gotta show signs of some sort of like logic. #00:19:49-9#
interviewer: I don’t think anyone was upset by it. They, almost always, were like, “So I’m doing something wrong?” Like, they sort of thought that it was what they were doing. Um, and so they’d try to figure out how to make the system work the way that they understood. #00:20:08-5#
respondent: Would you then re-state it so that they would get some kind of… #00:20:14-2#
interviewer: I’d give them back control at some point. #00:20:15-5#
respondent: It’s just a matter of pressing something on there was it? #00:20:20-4#
interviewer: Yep. Yep. #00:20:21-5#
respondent: Yeah. Are you finding it’s … I’m just thinking also from some of the work I’ve done actually with George Khut and (incomprehensible) where we created this, um, sort of, you know facilitated body experience thing we did that, um, yeah. Just having like disorienting activities, just to get you out of… We’re looking at more I guess you know, going into a sort of a… Like I like this as like a dedicated special space and using ideas around ritual and things to transition in and out. But, um, yeah the disorientation, but I remember one of the participants that came through, the first thing we did was put a mask on them and get them to take their shoes off. And then they had to walk, you know, we took them around in a circle and these stones on their foot so it was all just very sensory and non-sensory partially. Um and then afterwards, he confided that he had some sort of claustrophobia about having having things on his head, (laughing) but he hadn’t (incomprehensible) during the whole event so I was like “Okay.” Need to have that on a consent form, (laughing) on the release form. But um, yeah, with I guess autistic small children, whether there’s different sort of conditions you have to… well their behaviour is surprising sometimes in terms of the kinds of triggers you might put into things. #00:21:59-0#
interviewer: Yeah, I mean, it’s, they’re also so, so different. I don’t think it’s possible to kind of get to that level of being able, yeah, like having that kind of control. Well, not control, but… #00:22:16-1#
respondent: Well, just a mapping of it like that, to that granularity. #00:22:20-0#
interviewer: Yeah. Um, they’re not just so of unique, but they’re quite extreme in their uniqueness as well. Um, so like one child might be so attracted to green, like everything needs to be green. And, um, I had an interesting response to the lights I’ve put under those, two interfaces, the kind of quality of that light was really overwhelming for some kids and like it just coming through the holes in the second interface. Um, there was a boy who couldn’t look directly at it, so he kind of looked away and that was his way of filtering out that sharp, bright light. Um, some kind of hint of sounds, some kind of of touch. It’s yeah, it’s really difficult. #00:23:08-9#
respondent: How did that influence what you devised? #00:23:11-3#
interviewer: Um, the only way I really kind of took it into consideration was thinking about finding a balance between a space that felt contained and safe, but not claustrophobic. So I wanted it to feel as though this environment was not a part of this kind of concrete, very strong room. It was its own space and so I’ve got the running water going around and soft floor, um, diffused light. #00:23:47-6#
respondent: The diffused lighting is very lovely. And I’ve just realised, you’ve mirrored the dome, haven’t you. (laughing) #00:23:55-9#
interviewer: Yeah, yea. I had this conversation with George yesterday and he’s like “Oh, it’s a dome.” And I was like, so many people don’t realise it’s a dome and George went “Really?!” I was like “Yeah!” #00:24:05-2#
respondent: It’s the dome, yeah. (laughing) Just working and seeing them both here with the doorway so distinct now. #00:24:11-5#
interviewer: Yep. It’s funny isn’t it? Well I would say, probably 50% of the people don’t make the connection. #00:24:20-3#
respondent: Yeah, right, between the outer, shell and one inside. #00:24:23-4#
interviewer: It’s kind of an odd relationship cause you are looking down at something that you were inside and controlling. #00:24:30-3#
respondent: Mmm hmm. In-between skins. #00:24:34-3#
interviewer: Yeah, I don’t know if there’s a way to get around that, um, that kind of abstraction which I think was sort of problematic for the kids on each of these interfaces. Um, colour they understood. Sound was fine, but um position was not. #00:24:53-7#
respondent: Right, oh okay. #00:24:54-8#
interviewer: Um, particularly, because what you’re working with, which is in front of you, is controlling by something behind you, which is a bit strange. #00:25:02-9#
respondent: Yeah. But then if you are working with someone in there it’s… Yeah are you creating things for yourself or for the other person as well, so maybe depending on where they’re oriented? Did there any comments around that? Whether it was… #00:25:22-7#
interviewer: Umm… No. #00:25:26-4#
respondent: Yeah. Cause it’s interesting in terms of the kinda, well, the social interaction or collaboration or… Yeah, do you start making music together or is it… What’s going on with, I’m pressing a red button, you’re pressing a green button. #00:25:45-9#
interviewer: Yeah, I’d have really liked to explore that a lot more. #00:25:51-9#
respondent: But you have video data that you have… yeah, all those sessions recorded. #00:25:58-4#
interviewer: I’ve got key press data and videos. So this is what I recorded from inside the tent, inside the domes, 3 different angles. #00:26:06-6#
respondent: Mmm, nice. It’s all very beautifully laid out… #00:26:12-4#
interviewer: Thanks. #00:26:14-7#
respondent: …constructed. It’s great. It’s great to see it actually something… This kind of research presented like this. #00:26:21-1#
interviewer: I… When I was thinking about this I was quite nervous; I didn’t feel like it would present like a gallery context, even though this is the lab. It’s laid out like an exhibition but I don’t… Nothing’s finished. Everything is, even this is just a work in progress. But, yeah, I’m quite happy how that kind of lays out now. #00:26:44-7#
respondent: And this, putting these diagrams on the floor, doing them like this. I like it. #00:26:50-3#
interviewer: Um, something I did with George yesterday which I found really interesting was this tape that I’ve got laying here is kind of the stages of my process. So it went from I guess the original concept which grew out of my Honors work, to material studies, to a critical design. So this is something I was thinking through, not just to kind of deal with the thinking about the technology that I was working with, but I wanted to sort of think about what it would be like to be autistic. Um, and so I came up with these headphones which have microphones on them. And when you put them on, your sense of sound is very different. It picks up like scuffing shoes, and um, so I wanted to think about if you were quite particular in the way that you processed audio, how would that change the way that you interacted with this kind of environment? #00:27:48-7#
respondent: Can I try? Is it working? #00:27:52-9#
interviewer: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think they’re working. (pause) #00:27:56-0#
interviewer: It usually picks up this. (scuffing shoes) Not on? #00:28:05-9#
respondent: I can hear that. Can I normally hear that? #00:28:08-4#
interviewer: Probably not quite the same way. It seems to exclude voice a little bit, and this music definitely disappears. #00:28:17-4#
respondent: (pause) I can hear that. I can hear music. Isn’t it to cancel something out did you say? #00:28:24-9#
interviewer: Yeah, it, it’s kinda a little bit like wearing binaural headphones. (pause) It doesn’t sound different? Maybe I need to have a play with it. #00:28:38-4#
respondent: (long pause, listening through headphones) Is that normally like that? Oh no, it is! It is, you’ve like yeah, is squeaky, okay. #00:29:00-3#
interviewer: It is working? They might be a little bit quiet too. I might need to turn them up a bit. #00:29:08-8#
respondent: Are my shoes squeaking or is it this thing? You’ve done something, yeah, because now my shoes are squeaking. Yeah. (laughing) I’m like “What’s going on?” Not a squeaky shoe again. This one work? (pressing button) #00:29:29-1#
interviewer: This is also a time when I was thinking about and making it a sort of a narrative space and so the music and lighting played out some sort of emotional change. But I thought, in the end that was far too complex. #00:29:42-5#
(pause) #00:29:50-6#
interviewer: Um, so yeah, that became my, I guess my interface design came out of that, thinking through the problems with that kind of approach and then onto the interviews. #00:30:05-1#
respondent: So how did you, so you, wanted to have some experience of being autistic potentially, but where did you get the… What were you drawing on to inform that? #00:30:16-4#
interviewer: To end up here with the headphones? #00:30:19-4#
respondent: Yeah, not the solution so much, but just um… I mean, do you have a relationship with an autistic child or did you have did you have some sort of immersion with them before or was it more… #00:30:31-1#
interviewer: Me saying that I guess is very problematic. It’s more that I wanted to think about the sensory processing issues that are usually found in autism. Um so if you were finding it like, quite overwhelmed by sound, which many autistic people are, then what would that be like and how would interaction change? That was the idea. #00:30:59-8#
respondent: Yeah. What did you find? #00:31:01-2#
interviewer: Oh, this was really just a, kind of a exploration, a bit of critical study. Um, something I did, ended up in a gallery just to think through ideas. So I didn’t work with the children at all with this. Um, yeah it was just some of the early work. #00:31:19-7#
respondent: So sort of playing with just the sensory perception? #00:31:26-1#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:31:27-7#
respondent: Okay. That’s nice. (pause) What are you doing here? What’s that one? (pointing at photo of table interface prototype) #00:31:46-0#
interviewer: Ahh, this was, this was a really early interface um, test. I had a camera underneath and the lighting was controlled by basically blocking out light on top so I was thinking “How could just use your hands or your body to control?” lighting. (laughing) As you can see it’s all held together with tape and cable ties. #00:32:09-2#
respondent: (laughing) That’s what you’ve gotta do, huh? That’s the nature of it. Low-fi, yeah. No, it’s interesting to see how you’ve kind of stripped back to rudimentary materials, I guess. Like it’s so easy just to go into high-tech lighting solutions and things, but yeah, just your choice of fabrics and… It has this lovely muted quality to light diffusion. #00:32:41-0#
interviewer: Everything I do has got a bit of Frankenstinian quality about it. Like I just, what have I got, how can I make this out of what’s around me? I mean, this is all shower curtain. #00:32:50-6#
respondent: Oh right, okay. (pause) Yeah, well that’s useful too in terms of… I mean, someone could potentially, you could give them a kit or the modules for the sort of, as a sort of DIY thing and instantly you’ve got something you can work with. Yeah. Actually George came in and gave a lecture on Saturday and then um, cause I’m running the studio on sort of somatic user experience design. And just, part of it’s looking at the sort of impact of what’s going around us or interactions that you design on your body, the state you’re feeling today and things like that. And just, yeah, looking at that kind of arc that you might… If you’re creating effects like that. Like do you need to sort of ease in and out or (incomprehensible) abrupt? Like what’s the somatic sort of effect of things? So it’s interesting to see this, cause it’s very gentle. Yeah. Is that on purpose I imagine? #00:33:55-9#
interviewer: Yeah, it is. Um, although when you press the buttons it’s very immediate, so this fade of colours is supposed to be inviting. Um, but I wanted the immediacy when you pressed the button to really make the connection as strong as possible. So there is a different quality to the lighting. #00:34:15-5#
respondent: But how you’re filtering the light, too, through the fabric, so it’s softening it as well, even if it turns on straight away. #00:34:23-5#
interviewer: Yeah, I’ve also got diffusers on each of the lights. I wanted to really um, make it as gentle… #00:52:28-9#
respondent: I’m just wondering whether you’ve, in terms of this you know, the effect, so you’ve got your lighting which makes an effect and how it impacts the somatic state, and whether you’re working, how much you’re working into that as part of this work? #00:34:49-1#
interviewer: As part of what I’m doing? #00:34:50-0#
respondent: Or maybe it’s another aspect to it, delve into a bit more. #00:34:54-6#
interviewer: Um, it’s nothing that I’m dealing with directly. I guess… It’s obviously there, like I’m looking at how people respond. But I have no way of measuring their physiology. That’s something I did think about early on, like “How? What kind of biofeedback could I get?” But I thought that was too invasive with, especially autistic children. #00:35:20-5#
respondent: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it doesn’t have to be technology based. I mean it’s… yeah, but the you have the challenge of people actually articulating what they’re feeling. But if things are, I mean people can differentiate um, fundamental levels of whether something’s peaceful or it was very sudden and abrupt. You know. And sometimes you want that. Sometimes you want to surprise and shock or just make people alert. And other times you want to calm them down. So whether you talk about in sort of you know, psychological and physiological terms, or probably more I guess how I’d just normally talk about those kinds you know, visceral experiential effects. #00:36:04-4#
interviewer: Mmm. Yeah, that may be something that comes from going through all the interview transcripts. Off the top of my head I can’t remember… #00:36:14-8#
respondent: Yeah, or maybe just a dimension to consider um, because you’re looking at that. You know, there’s a loop there in terms of, well there is the interaction loop and also the sort of you know, sabotaging thing going on. But, um, yeah even in that behaviour, like it’s interesting to… Is there a satisfaction in doing that sort of repetitive stuff that’s a certain bodily quality? Or it’s hard to probably delve into all of that stuff. But um, yeah, I mean the sounds you’ve chosen as well, like I’m just wondering what um, the participants, how they respond to those on a maybe more… #00:36:57-7#
interviewer: Certainly quality of life and that ambient, running water, birds, the chirping, that kind of stuff generally gave me feedback of “It’s a calming, like, welcoming space to be in.” Um, that was probably as much as I got. Um, although yeah, the feedback about the quality of the light that was inside of the interface was, I guess, a negative um, response which I hadn’t thought of when I set that up. #00:37:33-1#
respondent: What were you looking for? Was there a certain like measure of success that you were looking for when people are um in there, or is more just open? #00:37:42-5#
interviewer: Really it’s just more of a connection between the parent and the child. And that came from this Honours work. The second device that I did was this set of 3 vibrating joysticks. And the girl with autism was using that one and she made it work and immediately like looked up to her mother, which I didn’t think much about. But I was working with a therapist who said that was, well they call it joint attention, um, which is really important in development of any child, but particularly in autism. And that little idea is sort of how I ended up here, um, so how I encourage that connection between the parent and the child, or well, any caregiver and child. Um, and obviously, yeah, you could talk about that between children or between anyone. Um, but that would be how I measured the success of it – whether there was some sort of interaction between the two. #00:38:43-1#
respondent: That seemed to be shared in some way? #00:38:47-4#
interviewer: Yeah, yeah. #00:38:48-6#
respondent: Uh huh. So have you got that down to some… #00:38:53-2#
interviewer: I’ve got a few good examples of it happening, yeah, which was really nice. #00:38:58-1#
respondent: All right, yeah. #00:38:58-8#
(pause) #00:39:05-8#
interviewer: Oh, before I forget… so this is what I did with George yesterday which I thought was really fun, I got chalk and asked him about his own process. And I sort of drew that out on the floor and looked at how it, mapped, or it was different to mine. So I’ve taped out the stages of my process from I guess concept to material to prototype to iteration and data gathering. So I was wondering if you could um, kind of relate your process in similar terms; how that would look if I drew that out on the floor. #00:39:52-2#
respondent: Umm. Oh, okay, I’ve just got a really, what would you call it? I don’t do just one kind of practice, so it’s… Yeah, um, just wondering which one to sort of bring in. Um. Yeah, maybe if we just speak in general terms. Umm. Yeah, I might just use an example that’s not um, is it okay if it’s not technology based. So um, I’ve probably done more stuff recently with performance, crafting a performance which is a bit different. But, just thinking through where I would have an initial idea or something I’m wanting to explore and um, and often I start with (incomprehensible) usually quite a strong image that comes to mind. So, um, that’s maybe got some kind of composition to it, but it’s an image that’s got some kind of I don’t know, some power that just makes me want to bring it to life in some way. Is this making sense? #00:41:11-7#
interviewer: Yep. #00:41:12-1#
respondent: And um, but then um, then I’ll sort of attack that from a couple of different ways. Like there’s obviously how I want the body to find a way of a language for the body, to sort of articulate that. And then, I work a lot with costume as well so, that’s sort of you know, not just to dress the body, but as a way of actually finding um, finding a creative language with costume as well. So it’s about the costume and body coming together or apart, or reconfiguring things within that. So I’d maybe start, and I do a lot of improvisation like improvised movement, but then trying to find particular… um, yeah, principles or language in that, that will then inform the performance itself. So I don’t know if this is really translating of course to this particular application context. (laughing) #00:42:10-2#
interviewer: I was trying to think of what it would look like. #00:42:12-1#
respondent: Oh, yeah, okay, how to draw that. #00:42:14-3#
interviewer: So you have like an idea I guess? This is how I started George’s yesterday. He comes up with an idea first, like a thought bubble. #00:42:24-3#
respondent: Okay, yeah, idea. And the idea, that idea because it is performance, there needs to be a body and it needs to be in space somewhere. #00:42:34-5#
interviewer: Kind of like a physical exploration of the idea, or… #00:42:37-4#
respondent: Yeah, there’s the physical sort of body exploration of the idea which obviously, but that then needs to be sited somewhere. So, you know, whether it’s a stage, but I prefer finding interesting performance sites, so more like site-specific. #00:42:52-7#
interviewer: Are they parallel processes or are they the same process? #00:42:55-8#
respondent: Um… they could, it depends what comes first, it’s sort of opportunistic in that way. But, so I, for example, um, I mean, yeah, just recently I did a performance at Carriageworks in this particular passageway, so that was set. So the site was set, and then um, I wanted to work with a sort of allegorical figure of horse-human, sort of, um, metamorphic kind of approach. But that was also carrying on from a previous project, so there’s still stuff to explore that I wanted to transport across to this new um, setting and context. #00:43:43-0#
interviewer: Okay, so. #00:43:46-7#
respondent: Yeah, so how would that… #00:43:47-4#
interviewer: Maybe there’s a, let’s draw a stage with a person on it. #00:43:51-0#
respondent: (laughing) Yeah, thank you! But then there’s like a previous work I guess that’s sort of informing that so there’s um, an idea image here that maybe, how do I show that, that’s coming, coming… It’s its own thing, but then it’s drawing on a previous work. #00:44:06-9#
interviewer: A previous work that might be another stage, or another space with a person. #00:44:12-8#
respondent: History, like, yeah. (laughing) But within that, there’s usually um, some kind of costume apparatus prop thing will get devised, which is then becomes, like I’m interacting with that to create new form, morphology, language. #00:44:34-2#
interviewer: Does that come from the original idea or come from the physical and spacial exploration? #00:44:40-9#
respondent: Um, usually more from here I think. Yeah, this is sort of the imaginary world. #00:44:48-9#
interviewer: And so I guess that’s another parallel. #00:44:51-5#
respondent: Yeah, we could draw um… What’s the, okay, some kind of, sort of like a costume look like. (laughing) I’m trying to think. Um, maybe just some kind of… maybe here (drawing) and um, a prop! What are these ones, these are like, okay, maybe this sort of crutch-like with a… Okay, this is this weird like horseshoe crutch thing. Does it look sort of crutchy? #00:45:37-7#
interviewer: Yep. #00:45:38-6#
respondent: Um… Yeah, so I mean they’re not, yeah, they’re not um, computational technologies, but they’re also, I’m looking at them as ways of changing my um, normal embodiment. So it’s just kind of, you know, this sort of thing going on. #00:45:58-9#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:46:00-4#
respondent: Change, and like cycles, is going, this kind of thing. Um, yeah, because I’m interested I guess in going beyond the sort of mundane human figure in the world, and finding… Well both are sort of imaginary spaces to sort of exist in. You know, creating these imaginary worlds but then materialising them back through movement and costumes and then creating this new language outside of just the kind of conventions of what we normally do. So um, that’s especially when I’m like doing a solo performance for example. But that could also be with a group of people, but this is I guess my very particular process in a way. I tend to find very generative. #00:46:52-5#
interviewer: Yep. Do you have a measure of success in that kind of project? #00:46:58-0#
respondent: (laughing) A measure of success? Oh, um… #00:47:01-8#
interviewer: Or do you even try? Is it part of the work? #00:47:08-9#
respondent: There’s definitely always some kind of criteria, um, I think for any performance or like development of something artistic where you feel like you’ve created something interesting or worthwhile or feel like I’ve challenged myself beyond what I would normally do. So I think for this particular work I just did like a week ago… Um, yeah, all the this sort of setting and the costume came together and created a really strong image that I think had lots of um, sort of dimensions to it. And so, depending where you were watching from, which part you saw, you probably read the work quite differently. I guess I was partially interested in that and that I could have a very loose construct of things. But they’d evoke more than my initial thoughts I’d put into it. #00:48:07-7#
interviewer: Yep. #00:48:08-1#
respondent: Um, and that I somehow like actually in the performance felt um, a kind of creativity in doing that and a power in actually being present in that space. Like, I wasn’t just me, my everyday me, so yeah, if I was able to actually feel like I slipped into something else um, that had some kind of creative, generative thing going on. Then, yeah, I felt that was sort of like how I was measuring that. Yeah, so it’s more like a um… Yeah, because most of the day you’re just in this very mundane thing going on and just always, it’s trying to find ways to get out of that into more heightened, I guess, state of being. That has some kind of creative foment in that, and hopefully can affect other people as well. So, yeah. #00:49:05-0#
interviewer: Do you try and capture that affect of other people at all? Do you… In say this example, would you get feedback from people, an audience? #00:49:17-2#
respondent: It was something very ad-hoc in terms of people in terms of people that maybe came up and said something to me, um, you know Facebook likes, that sort of stuff. Um… but when I’m in this, because it is improvised performance, if there are people around, an audience, I will respond to them, but… um, or allow their presence to you know, influence what I’m doing. So, um, you know, in a way, if people are staying around and filming, you can sense that they’re actually engage, then that’s also something. It tells me something hopefully is going right. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, I guess why I’ve brought up this particular example is because this whole thing around making strange which um… Yeah, in maybe more these sort of settings, I’m interested in how you can kind of bring that in to a design on making process. #00:50:15-6#
interviewer: Mmm hmm. #00:50:16-7#
respondent: So that um, so that you have these somatic investigations that go on first, that try and break down your habitual, everyday ways of actually moving, thinking about moving, you know, how you experience movement, and trying to put a more imaginative, open up the sort of imaginative dimension in that. Yeah and the feeling, you can sort of feel your movement more and finding perhaps um, creative potential in very small things. You’ve talked about repetition, so it’s the repetition that then has that suddenly amplify into something else um, it hasn’t reduced down into a repetitive act, that’s actually opened up into something. So that’s interesting. Um, like, yeah, how long can something repeat and sustain until it tips over into something else. So, um, I think also like in performance too, if you’re working with that kind of thing, you can just take a very simple action but… um, I mean you could set yourself of just trying to repeat it exactly the same. How long can you do that for? Or see whether it starts to something emerges out of that particular gesture or not. So the, I mean, I try and embody whether performance methodology which is in some ways about cultivating a receptivity to that kind of um, generative process. So, yeah, rather than try and drive the action all the time, you kind of allow the body to sort of give you new material. #00:52:09-1#
interviewer: Like, emerge. #00:52:10-7#
respondent: Yeah, yeah. #00:52:12-3#
interviewer: Okay. (pause) Great. I’m going to turn off the recording now because I’m going to have to transcribe all of this at some point. #00:52:23-1#
respondent: (laughing) We’ve probably gone off topic here or something. #00:52:27-3#
interviewer: That’s good! #00:52:28-3#
—
Interaction design and HCI practitioner
respondent: Ahh… she was planning to, run a study in Willoughby… #00:00:08-5#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:00:09-2#
respondent: Um, that didn’t happen in the end, so we had the X-Communicate symposium here. Did you come to that? #00:00:14-3#
interviewer: No, I didn’t. #00:00:15-1#
respondent: But, um, she ended up doing that and having a study at the Seymour Centre as well. #00:00:20-3#
interviewer: Okay. #00:00:20-8#
respondent: Yeah. #00:00:21-1#
interviewer: Yep. Um, all right. So, how I’ve been doing this previously is it’s roughly… well I aim for about 20 minutes. #00:00:31-8#
respondent: Do you need to turn this on, or…? #00:00:32-5#
interviewer: It should already be recording. #00:00:33-8#
respondent: Yeah? #00:00:34-2#
interviewer: Say a few words for me. #00:00:37-4#
respondent: Just testing. Test. #00:00:38-6#
interviewer: Yeah. Perfect. Um, the idea is that um, I’ll kinda just lay it out. This work is showing how my process unfolded, um, so I kinda take you through that, and then I wanted to talk to you about your process. Perhaps how that compares to mine, if it does, in any way. It’s sort of around 20 minutes that I’m after, but usually it goes a bit longer. We just get chatting, which is fine. Um, do you know anything about my work? #00:01:08-6#
respondent: Ahh, no. #00:01:09-7#
interviewer: Okay. So I have spent the last few years designing interactive space for autistic kids. Um, the age group is about three to five. Um, I’ve done a few studies with um, autistic children and then a group of neurotypical children of the same age. Um, this is the space that they’ve come into for the studies. Um, I don’t consider any of this kind of finished work, it’s all prototyping and exploration of some of those ideas. So it’s probably easier if we go in here first so you can get a sense of what the kids did. #00:01:49-8#
respondent: Mmm hmm. #00:01:50-6#
interviewer: Um, so they would come in here, one child with their parent, and it was non-directed. They could stay for as long as they wanted. It tended to be sort of between 10 and 20 minutes. Um, and they could play in whatever way they chose. Um, so this is the third and final interface that I made. Actually I’ll just let you have a play with it, first of all. #00:02:23-8#
respondent: (long pause while pressing buttons) #00:02:42-8#
interviewer: So the interaction with the buttons and coloured light, um, the idea with this interface is to have a very immediate connection to the response of the space, so obviously any coloured button, first press turns into that space, that colour. Um, if, I was thinking a little bit about issues with repetitive behaviours with autistic children, so just doing the same thing over and over again. Um, and so, it’s this program to, over time, if they stay within the same panel, the mapping becomes more complex, so same panel on the tent and interface. If they continue in the same space for even longer, eventually the mapping is totally gone, so you get different colours all over the space and different sounds. Um, I’ve been working with that idea as something from um, psychology called sabotage. So um, what I’m trying to do is I set up the sense of control really quickly and then eventually, that is taken away. So that’s the sabotage and what that, the idea with sabotage is by doing that, it kind of motivates the children to be more explicit about what they’re thinking or trying to um, get out of the experience. So the best example I had was an autistic boy who came in and immediately figured out that this was a scale of notes and so he went around and around and around and around. And the sabotage is programmed in, but I’ve also got like a sabotage button that I could trigger from outside the space. And when I did that, he immediately sat down and spoke to his mum and was like, “Can you help me? Can you try pressing that button at the same time?” So, it went from what was just a repetitive, kind of, I guess internal behaviour to being outwardly expressive. Even when I switched the sabotage back off, he continued to interact in that way rather than going back to the repetitive behaviour. Um, that’s really it. #00:05:06-3#
respondent: Okay. Cool. #00:05:07-5#
interviewer: Um, I’ve got a few cameras around the bottom here which is how I observe and record the um, the interactions, which I code later on. Um, so I’ll show you a couple of the steps that took me to there. (leaving dome space) This was a work I did for Honours a few years ago now, when I worked with a two-year old girl with autism. And the idea was to, um, kind of through her interaction, figure out which sensory preferences she had. So this first device was like a RFID data reader for sound, pressure sensors for vibration, and proximity sensor for like a visual feedback. She was clearly attracted to vibration and so the second device that one in the middle were these joysticks, which um, they all vibrated different speeds depending on which direction you pushed them. Um, but they had different material, so I was trying to separate whether it was really vibration she was interested in or just the materiality of the object. It seemed to be vibration, and so the um, last object I designed was a change table. So her mother, who I worked with as well, said that changing her was really difficult. She was active and hard to um, just settle down. But the vibration interaction we found really sort of focused her, so we thought maybe a vibrating change table would be helpful to kind of get her settled in that process. The trick with it was the two opposing corners were the triggers, and they were too far apart for the girl to um, trigger on her own, so she needed to actually ask her mother to help her make that happen. So I was trying to get some cooperative interaction happening. #00:07:05-1#
respondent: What do you mean with vibration change table? #00:07:09-5#
interviewer: Ahh, so this last one here. #00:07:12-0#
respondent: So as in vibration? What do you mean with, what was changing? #00:07:17-5#
interviewer: Oh change as in ‘change her nappy’. She was a two-year old girl. #00:07:21-5#
respondent: Oh, yeah. Okay. Got it. Yes. Okay. #00:07:23-0#
interviewer: So it’s kind of a funny angle there, but it’s kind of, you know, this size um, and underneath the surface, there was rows of vibration motors. Um, to trigger them, both of those red corners needed to be pressed at the same time. Um, the second device, when we introduced it to the girl, ahh, and she started using it in real life and realised that she was able to make that vibration happen, she immediately looked at her mother and showed what… there was a therapist there as well, and the therapist identified that as joint attention, which was quite important for the development of a child with autism. So that’s really where all of these ideas started. How does, how can this kind of technology facilitate better social communication between the child and their parent? Um, but I wanted to look at that on a larger scale, so they were very much designed for the one girl, um, whereas this – #00:08:25-8#
respondent: For the two-year old? This is all for a two-year old girl? #00:08:28-5#
interviewer: Yep. #00:08:28-8#
respondent: Okay. #00:08:29-2#
interviewer: Um, and so what I’ve done in this space is I’ve mapped out on the floor how this idea kind of led to some material explorations. I was looking at um, different materials, the way that they could… I wanted to create a space that was quite contained, um, that felt safe but not claustrophobic. Um, also, I’m using a lot of um, I guess sensory input that could be overwhelming for a child, so lighting and sound. I wanted to make it all quite subdued, so um, I worked with a material that’s got a nice, kinda softening effect. Um, and then I came into this prototyping stage where I thought through the more technical side of things, like how the lights work, um, the system involved. At the time, I was thinking that lighting and sound could be kind of a narrative way of exploring. But (cough) excuse me, um, it felt far too complex for the age group I was working with, and so this became more of an idea to think through what it might be like to have a sensory processing problem, which is quite common in autism, um, and how that changes the way you interact. So I made these headphones that have microphones on them, um, that pick up quite different sounds. So if there’s a lot of people around, it feels, um, it’s sort of a strange sensation. It’s a bit like binaural headphones where you feel a little bit… Ahh, what’s the word? It’s hyperreal, the way the sound comes in. Um, so I just wanted to get a sense of that change in sensation and how that would change how you experience something like that. Um, and then I went into the interface design. The first one was… You might be familiar with the Reactable. #00:10:42-1#
respondent: Yep. #00:10:42-7#
interviewer: Yep. It’s a very similar set-up. #00:10:44-5#
respondent: Yep. #00:10:45-1#
interviewer: Um, these surfaces just replace the dome on top of that table, so that tabletop is removable. Um, I found this was just too abstract for the age group I was working with. Cause there’s no mapping of position on that surface. Um, I went into like a peg-and-hole kind of game where each coloured peg corresponded to one of the lights on the tent. #00:11:15-3#
respondent: Right. Okay. #00:11:16-7#
interviewer: It was more successful, but um, I had some issues with the autistic children particularly. Um, I had lighting underneath, which was these lights. And the quality of light was… Um, somebody gave me the feedback, it felt very sharp and so there was one boy who couldn’t look directly at the table. It was his way of kind of filtering out um, that intense light. Um, and so we ended up with that scale model interface, which I think is probably the most successful, particularly because it’s so immediate with the buttons. The camera tracking the with both of these had a little bit of lag and that was just enough to throw the kids a bit. #00:12:03-0#
respondent: Yeah. Right. Okay. #00:12:05-3#
interviewer: Um, and I guess this kind of iterative process went back and forth with um, interviewing um, therapists, which I brought into this space, as well as um, doing post-study interviews with the parent and child after they’ve come into the space. Um, and that’s really it. #00:12:29-6#
respondent: Cool. #00:12:30-6#
interviewer: Yeah. Sorry, that was kind of like an unloading very quickly. (laughing) #00:12:36-7#
respondent: Yeah. Good, good. #00:12:37-1#
interviewer: (pause) (cough) (long pause) Um, this was a really early interface design I was playing with. Um, perhaps not using an object at all, just the body to… there’s a camera underneath and blocking out lights. #00:13:09-4#
respondent: (pause) Okay. Cool. This is interactive? (referring to dome model) #00:13:22-4#
interviewer: Yeah. It just triggers different scenes, I guess. #00:13:26-3#
respondent: Yep. (pause) Did you evaluate as well or was it just like a short model? #00:13:33-0#
interviewer: This was a pretty short model. It was set up in an exhibition. Um, the feedback I got was mostly that this was really kind of off-putting for a lot of people, that I didn’t evaluate at any kind of… Um, I didn’t quantify it in any way. #00:13:53-2#
respondent: Yeah. (pause) Good. #00:14:05-0#
interviewer: Yeah. This is also the model that I’m um, trying to think through at the moment. It brings together a cybernetic system, which is kind of the way that I designed the interactive system and I’m trying to join it to… I don’t know if you know of activity theory. It comes in HCI a little bit. #00:14:27-4#
respondent: Yeah. I’ve heard about it. Yes. #00:14:28-9#
interviewer: Um, so particularly, using this model for analysis. So thinking about how the person wants to change the object or objective, and kind of what happens in that area when they are sabotaged. So um, there’s the breakdown that I think Susan Bødker talks about it a little bit. So when subconscious actions become conscious, when there’s a breakdown occurring. So I’m kind of trying to make that breakdown happen so that the child sort of reassesses what they’re trying to achieve, and that just gives me something to observe. Um, so yeah. That’s where I’m introducing sabotage. As an external effect on the environment. #00:15:21-1#
respondent: (long pause) So this is sort of retrospectively describing your process or the model you implemented? Or like is it going to be used as a model for designing similar installations? #00:15:52-9#
interviewer: It kind of, this is always something I’ve been working with in cybernetic um, systems, particularly Gordon Pask’s conversation theory. Um, that idea of the perceived boredom comes from his Musicolour system. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that one? #00:16:11-9#
respondent: No. I don’t think so. No. #00:16:13-1#
interviewer: He created this lighting system which responded to the way musicians played music, so it would pick up a melody or a tempo and reflect that back. But, the best, well the most interesting part of that system was at some point, it stopped responding in kind and went off on its own thing, so it was like the perceived boredom. And then it was up to the participant to try and re-engage the system. Um, so that was an adaptive system which is beyond what I’ve got here, but that idea that um, it stops responding, and then so it’s up to the participant to you know, drive whatever happens next. And that’s the conversation. Um, so that’s not quite where I got to, but it’s the ideas I’m working with. The activity theory is very much the analysis of the video um, the video observations in the space and sort of thinking about what is it that I’m looking for? What kind of behaviours? And I think sort of joining them is my way of um, situating the sabotage within my practice. It’s, as far as I can tell, not something that is in HCI or interaction design. It’s a term used from psychology, but I can’t find work of anyone that has deliberately sabotaged interaction, for that kind of purpose anyway. I mean they talk about the breakdown as something that happens more when someone doesn’t understand how an interface is supposed to work rather than um, doing, you know stopping something from working on purpose. #00:18:11-3#
respondent: Well it’s most likely you can find it in the area of Critical Design. Have you looked at that at all? #00:18:17-3#
interviewer: A little bit. Yeah. #00:18:18-5#
respondent: I guess maybe some of Bill Gaver’s work. #00:18:20-5#
interviewer: Yep. #00:18:21-5#
respondent: You’re familiar with Bill Gaver? #00:18:23-1#
interviewer: Yeah. Yeah I’ve looked at creative probe… #00:18:26-0#
respondent: Cultural probes. #00:18:27-5#
interviewer: Cultural probes. Yep, and then technology probes. #00:18:31-4#
respondent: Yeah. Yeah. I’m not sure if it’s sabotage. It’s more, it’s sort of, I don’t know, I guess it’s taking away some of your control that you have. But um, or abstracting that control. Like um, have you seen the drift table, for example? #00:18:51-1#
interviewer: Yeah. Yep. #00:18:52-0#
respondent: So right where you have one button which brings you back to your home base, but you don’t have buttons to interact with um, that map in front of you. And it’s um, you have to work out that it’s weight-based and you put weights on the table to go in a particular direction. It’s sort of taking away some of your control that you otherwise have or used to have in a HCI system. But it’s not so much sabotaging the control as in changing the parameters. Um, and I guess in critical design I guess, it’s sometimes used to um, provoke a response in the participants. Like an unusual response or to have unusual discoveries. And it’s also like adding an element of randomness. Like there was this a really nice study called um… What was it called Photobox? Something like Photobox. So they built a little box that had a lid and a photo printer inside. And um, it was connected to your Flickr account and it would um, randomly print, at random times, print five photos a month from your Flickr account. So you’d open a box and there might be photo in there or not, but you don’t know of when it’s happening across the month, so it’s adding this randomness to where people then develop a very um, well an interesting relationship with an object. Because like some of the participants got very frustrated because they would keep checking it, and there was no photo in there. Then they didn’t like the fact that they didn’t have that control of that process, but then there was also this element of surprise, which made them actually build a relationship with it. Because of that element of surprise, that it sort of had almost this life of its own. But I don’t if you can – I’m not familiar with the theory of sabotage, so I’m not sure if that’s similar. #00:20:46-2#
interviewer: There’s some similar ideas. I think where this is different is um, I’m trying to establish control, very clearly straightaway, and then take that away. So it’s not… #00:20:58-6#
respondent: It’s different. #00:20:59-7#
interviewer: Yeah. And then, what happens at that moment when they’re like, “Oh, this is not working the way that it just did or I expected it to.” Um, but it was interesting. None of the children… I kind of expected, especially the autistic kids, to be upset at that point, but I didn’t see any of that. They kind of worked harder to figure out what, how they could re-engage it. Unfortunately, I didn’t program it to the point where it could be re-engaged. It was more of an external thing where I could just turn sabotage on and off. Um, but I guess it had the same effect anyway because I was observing them from outside. Um, but yeah, I found that really interesting. I wasn’t working with low-functioning autistic children, um, which I would expect to have quite a different response. Um, but that’s probably where I’d like to go next with it if I was to turn it into a bigger study. #00:22:01-9#
respondent: Mmm hmm. Are you still doing that or is it the end of your PhD? #00:22:06-8#
interviewer: I’m hoping to submit for March. #00:22:09-1#
respondent: Okay, so you’ve wrapped up your studies? #00:22:11-2#
interviewer: When I pack this up, I just write. #00:22:12-6#
respondent: Okay. #00:22:13-5#
interviewer: Write for the next few months. #00:22:15-1#
respondent: So it would be like in your next position or whatever you do next to become a new experiment. Okay. #00:22:22-1#
interviewer: Um, I’ve spoken to quite a lot of therapists, particularly occupational therapists, and they’re really interested in how this space would work in their own practice. Um, so there might potential work with those kinds of people, which would be great. It’s what I wanted to do this time, but um, I found it really difficult to get those people on board coming from Art and Design. Um, I guess the way I structured this, it wouldn’t give them the kind of hard data that is valuable to them. So that’s probably something I look at next. #00:23:04-2#
respondent: Because you’re already doing this as a practice-based PhD I imagine? So exhibitions are part of that. #00:23:08-8#
interviewer: Yeah. Yeah. And I didn’t start with a hypothesis like they would, I’d be like, “I just want to see what happens.” (laughing) #00:23:15-9#
respondent: Yep. #00:23:16-1#
interviewer: (cough) Um, but yeah. Their feedback has been great, so we’ll see. #00:23:25-1#
respondent: Mmm hmm. What questions do you have for me? #00:23:32-3#
interviewer: Well, I would… In your own work, um, how do you involve participants? Do you involve participants at all? #00:23:43-0#
respondent: Yes. #00:23:43-2#
interviewer: Is it just after you’ve produced the artefact, or… #00:23:48-8#
respondent: Ideally we start with the participants. Yeah. So it depends a little bit um, as always it depends a little bit on timing, time, and budget also. But um, usually we try to start the participants and um, to what is known as user research, as you probably know and heard, and collect data from our participants before we actually do an installation or an intervention. I would call probably design intervention, rather than installation. I’m not coming from an artistic background, more from a design background. And ahh, again, depending on the particular project, it would take the data whether it’s interviews, surveys, or observations, or a combination and then analyse that in order to gather the requirements. Um, we often develop things like personas for example, and then develop artist storyboards for example. Both in terms of using storyboarding, in terms of representing the current situation and then using the storyboarding to describe the future scenario. So where we sort inject intervention into the same scenario and say this is how it’s going to look when, once that has been installed and the situation change and how the behaviour changes of people through installation. And then we built um, prototypes, and that can be paper-based or mockups and then ideally, we can go back and test it with participants, so similar to what maybe you have done here. With some of the prototypes are in particular I guess this is sort of a series of iterations. Um, and uh, so depending on the scale and the type of project that um, takes place or does not take place and some it has to take place with constraints. Like um, for example, the installation piece (incomprehensible) at the AMP building where right, which was massive media-facade projection, so that was very hard to test. So, what we did in that case, for example, was… Look, my PhD student at the time was doing a lot of simulations on this desktop computer and that was sort of a starting point, sort of like setting up with two floor projections. Setting it up as two displays, and just looking at that with live interaction input. And first of all, evaluating it ourselves and then we also made an installation in the Seymour Theatre, so we booked a theatre for two days or so, and used their stage. Cause they have like (incomprehensible) a stage mechanism, we used that to mount the projectors and actually have a projection of one of the surfaces and then send participants through this space and get to them the first experience from them and it was observation actually only, very informal. Just send them through and watch them, how they respond and um, engage with the work. Um, and then we also did a series of controlled studies where we tested different parameters in the same theatre space as well. Change parameters. Like for example, sound feedback, so we tried different ways of using or implementing sound feedback, or sound as a feedback mechanism and then adding surveys after that, so it was very structured research to ask people about their experience and look as that was happening. Um, before installing that, then actually at Circular Quay, where like it’s much harder to do any adaptations once it’s installed. I think we were still doing software adaptations in terms of the responsiveness and obvious things, but once it’s out there, it’s harder to make changes. But even then we sort of observed people in the space, how they interacted and also recorded the things on the computer, so we recorded their movement patterns, which is very similar to what you do with your cameras here. And then sort of wrote a reflective piece on that, on how people would interact with it in actual space. #00:27:49-1#
interviewer: Okay. Did you take any, I guess feedback data from people once you had the final installation? #00:27:57-4#
respondent: With that work, no. Um, it was partly because of ethics. #00:28:02-0#
interviewer: Okay. #00:28:02-2#
respondent: I think we, I can’t remember the time we didn’t have ethics or it whether was too complicated, like in um, some cases, we have ethics approval to distribute flyers for example for interviews. But um, it’s very hard, as you may know, it’s very hard in a public space to get people to interact with you and pause and to talk to you. So in that case, we didn’t do that. Another work we had last year with a student of mine in Vivid which was this augmented bin that you could play Tetris with, so we put something in to play Tetris. And there was an LED bowl around the bin so the bin was a display essentially, like a game world. Um, and that was also installed at Vivid, but without doing any, um, direct, seeking direct feedback from participants, but then we installed it again on our campus later. Where we had more control and we could um, have it over a longer time period and turn on and off different things and then both collect data in terms of like how much interaction is happening with the bin as well as doing interviews with people in the space. So often, we often try to collect a more structured feedback in a more controlled environment. #00:29:18-3#
interviewer: Yep. #00:29:18-8#
respondent: Um, which is probably partly because of a lot of our work being in the urban space where it’s very hard to collect information. For example, the project we did with Ian, um, we didn’t do any user research in the beginning because um, that’s not right, we did indirect user research, so we spoke to the Council and other stakeholders about the program and that they were trying to solve and so we’re trying to get information from them rather than going straight to the participants directly and ask them. Which is probably a bit of a time as well as permission and ethics reasons, for those reasons, we didn’t have the chance to actually go out and collect information. Um, so we sort of ended up doing more like an action research model where we’d install something, like we built something, installed it, observed, do interviews, and then take that back and make the next iteration. So, it’s a slightly different process. #00:30:14-7#
interviewer: So in those projects where you don’t get direct participant feedback in the final stage, do you, how do you measure success of a project? Do you try? #00:30:26-9#
respondent: Um, it’s not about measuring success of the project for us. Which, I don’t know if that’s maybe different to your work here, but um, in many cases, it’s more about identifying patterns or strategies or a combination of those. So, um, like, I mean with the Tetris bin for example, so the Tetris bin installation, one of the goals was that um, people would stop littering right, and put rubbish in the bin rather than on the street. Um, and we tried to measure that I guess in a campus study. But there was so many variables you can’t control. It’s actually hard to quantify that. And because most of the research I’m doing is qualitative rather than quantitative, I’m also not usually working with hypothesis and hypothesis driven my research. It’s more explorative. It’s usually not about saying whether you’re successful or not. Right, if you’re going to have a hypothesis, then you can’t really say anything was more successful or not. It’s more about um, identifying new knowledge in a particular domain. So, um, and with like the AMP installation, for example, we identified different ways of how people would interact in that urban space. Augmented urban space and the social interactions that were occurring out of that as well. And how their listening to the time of the day or the time of the night and the number of people in the space and all those things. #00:32:03-7#
interviewer: Yep. How do you work through that kind of data? #00:32:07-4#
respondent: The observational data? #00:32:10-5#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:32:10-7#
respondent: Um, so, different – in an another project where we had a public interactive screen that evaluated. We have video recordings similar to this. And so we have, because we’re using a Kinect camera in that case. We are recording depth image, depth-camera image um, which shows a number of people and what they’re doing. And then we also had a recording of the screen that they’re interacting with and then we were superimposing those so we could look at, okay, obviously behaviour and what you see on the screen and then we would go though those videos and coding them manually. And in that case, we actually just used, we didn’t use any software, we just went through all the videos manually and had an Excel spreadsheet to code. #00:32:56-7#
interviewer: Okay. #00:32:57-6#
respondent: Um, so it was, we did, oh I keep forgetting, but it’s inductive or deductive. I think in this case it was deductive because we had a um, either way we had a criteria beforehand so we were looking for these three or four different patterns and we go through the videos and just identify when those patterns occur and make notes along the way. And then also get, depending on the research we drew, we’d get at least two coders, so that we can look at an agreement score at the end and then calculate that or we would get someone to look at the random subset of the whole amount. #00:33:33-8#
interviewer: Yep. #00:33:34-3#
respondent: So if it’s, especially if it’s a more straightforward coding system, we’d get a random subset and then give it to the second person and then get the second person to code it and then see whether there, how much overlap there is to the first person. So that’s how you sort of like, you know justify that your coding, um, there was some rigour to the coding you’ve done. Um, with interview data, we usually either using software or just pen and paper or like, just paper like print out of transcribed interviews. Cut them into chunks of information and then just sort of shuffle them around into groups. And um, often (incomprehensible) the inductive content analysis where you sort of create categories as occurring through the contents. You’re trying to look for patterns in the content you collected. Um, like in one research, we looked at for example, it was a visualisation projection on the ceiling of your um, social media interactions, for like on Facebook, um and like if we both be talking loud, we’d each have a halo essentially projected above us and we would show our interactions as well on Facebook. #00:34:43-5#
interviewer: Okay. #00:34:44-3#
respondent: And so we validated that in focus groups and then we found patterns like um, I don’t know… privacy, um, I think interaction in terms of how to interact with it, usability problems, social um, interactions sort of occurring, these sort of things. So then we had those categories and could say within those categories and made those observations and this is what we think. Therefore it needs to be considered with these sorts of interventions. That’s the generalisation that we do (incomprehensible). #00:35:15-7#
interviewer: Good. #00:35:19-7#
respondent: Does that make sense? #00:35:20-7#
interviewer: Yeah. Yeah. It’s kind of similar to where I’m headed. I haven’t analysed all the data yet, but um, it feels like- #00:35:29-6#
respondent: I mean there’s, for video analysing, there’s software as you probably know. I keep forgetting the name of the package. Envideo? #00:35:37-5#
interviewer: Yeah. I’ve heard of that. #00:35:38-5#
respondent: And most universities provide that for free. And that then allows you to I think annotate video segments and like, you know make marks on the video at all, so it’s… um, if you have a lot of video to go through, it’s probably a good thing to do. Um, in our case, we had to do the analysis quickly, because there was a paper deadline and we were faster doing it that way manually rather than importing all the video (incomprehensible) direct form (incomprehensible) and office installing software, etc., etc. #00:36:09-2#
interviewer: Cool. Interesting. Um, what else was I going to ask you? I think that’s all. #00:36:24-0#
respondent: Really? #00:36:24-9#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:36:25-2#
respondent: Okay. #00:36:26-1#
interviewer: I mean, really, I just wanted to compare practices. Um, so yeah, that coding information’s really interesting, the way that you work through… Um, kinda, you bring in participants at several stages in the process. That’s really interesting. #00:36:49-2#
respondent: And ideally, you want to bring them in as much as possible right. And there’s of course it’s the idea of co-design or collaborative design or participatory design where you bring them in as designers, considering that they’re not designers. Um, but that takes just a lot of time and commitment. #00:37:08-3#
interviewer: So when you say participatory design, would you ask sort of specific design questions of the user or kind of take their more general feedback as something that directs you to the next iteration? #00:37:22-4#
respondent: Um, it’s a combination. So you actually get them into design solutions for you, but you don’t use them as solutions. You use them as user feedback. #00:37:33-4#
interviewer: Yep. #00:37:34-3#
respondent: If that makes sense, because they’re not designers. But um, it requires, it’s a long process and depending on which methodology at, it has four stages where you first of all um, immerse them into the problem space so they’re familiar with that and you get them to talk about their current experiences, which is also easy for us to do, right? It’s easy for us to talk about existing things as iterations. Then you get them to design solutions for the problem that you’re working on. And that can be using paper, cardboard, or low-fi materials, and then you get them to enact that. So you actually get them to take the prototype that you just built and pretend to use it. And then all that sort of feeds into your user research and you analyse it the same way you’d analyse interview data, for example. You don’t say, “This is the solution that they wanted so I’m going to build this now”. Which is often a misconception. #00:38:31-9#
interviewer: Have you ever worked with a population who couldn’t give you that kind of feedback? So, like, one of the reasons that I dropped autistic kids straight into here is because they couldn’t give me that feedback. And I think there’s the argument with technology probes, that you have to present kind of a functioning prototype to start getting feedback. #00:38:51-9#
respondent: That’s the idea of technology probes right, where you don’t start with the user research. You sort of build something and then you test it. And um, I think Bill Gaver does that in his research too, in that he doesn’t necessarily go out and collect user research. Um, I’m trying to think of this project. Some of his projects, is sort of immersed himself into this space and it was the cultural probes as was a way of collecting information and knowledge about the users. But there’s still then, I mean with the cultural probes start to take one bit of information that someone wrote on a postcard and use that as a design inspiration so the cultural probe is more of a way of getting inspiration as a designer rather than doing like a user research or an interview, where you know you interview a number of people from each of your sample populations and then you try to extract and generalise all that information. You know, just one piece of information is enough to come up with an idea, like the Drift Table idea underlying for that was someone wrote on a postcard, um, I think the question is “what do you do when you sit alone and you’re really bored at home and someone said, um, imagine my living room as a spaceship.” That’s what they wrote on a postcard, right? And so they went, “Oh, this is a cool idea. Let’s build this.” And then everything else was their designer, what does it call it, intuition in a way. They said, “Okay it’s going to be a table and you know, buttons.” It’s weight-based and all that stuff. It’s sort of the designer input and then they built that as a technology probe and put it to people and then see how they use it and often they use it in a different way, like that example that I had, which was the, what was it called? Um, I think that, the cupboard where you put your keys on when you come in. I don’t know if you’ve seen this project. When you come into your home and you usually have a cupboard and area where you throw your keys. And it was linked to a picture and depending on how you throw your keys on the thing, the picture would tilt or (incomprehensible) it would visualise your emotions when you come home and you slam the key. And the picture gets distorted. But then people used it in a very different way and started developing a personal relationship with the picture and trying to use the key to control the way that the picture was responding. So there was, they were using it different ways. #00:41:08-8#
interviewer: Yeah. Yeah. #00:41:09-8#
respondent: Yeah. And that’s just a different approach to design. And that’s not one of them is better or worse than the other. It’s just a different way, and um, in many ways, if you do, if you’re using technology probes, you might discover um, solutions to what you otherwise might not have discovered, right. If you start by going to the user and collecting, you get sort of lost in the process of collecting information about the current problems, then you get stuck on that bit and maybe just sort of make a very small incremental improvement to an existing problem or an existing application you have. Whereas if you come in with your, um, using your design skills and knowledge as inspiration, you might develop something that they, that would’ve never come up as the data otherwise, and then see how they use it and refine it that way. Yeah. It’s the idea of critical design too, right. Critical design is not based on what users want or need. It’s sort of throwing something crazy at them and then seeing how they use it. #00:42:13-0#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:42:13-1#
respondent: Yeah. Yeah. #00:42:15-1#
interviewer: Great. All right. #00:42:19-3#
respondent: Good? #00:42:20-8#
interviewer: I might stop it there. #00:42:21-9#
respondent: Yep. #00:42:22-6#
—
HCI and media studies practitioner
respondent: Apart from what you sent. #00:00:15-9#
interviewer: Yep, okay. Um, so what I’ve done with the other interviews previously is kinda start at the end or, where it is at this stage, which I guess will give you a sense of where I ended up and then I’ll kinda talk through the process and then I want to ask a few questions about your own process and your practice and kinda how that might compare or contrast against mine. #00:00:41-2#
respondent: Mmm hmm. #00:00:42-0#
interviewer: So this is um, it’s basically a tent. Um, it’s a space for, it’s designed for autistic children aged kind of between 3 and 5, um, although I did observational studies with neurotypical children as well. #00:00:59-2#
respondent: What does neurotypical mean? #00:01:02-1#
interviewer: Normal, which is the word we don’t want to use. #00:01:04-7#
respondent: Okay. Children who aren’t autistic. #00:01:08-7#
interviewer: Yeah, exactly. Although I feel like it’s a massive spectrum and there’s not really an end and a beginning, so yeah, ‘neurotypical’ just comes from psychology. The way that I start the studies was a child comes into the space with their parent. It’s totally self-directed so they’re not given any instruction at all, although they did 3 iterations of the interface so after the first time they kind of had a sense of how it worked anyway. Um, the idea of the space, in it’s kind of, the way it deals with light and sound is supposed to feel calming and safe. Um, the interaction itself is designed to be very clear, so trying to give them a sense of control immediately. But beyond that, it’s mostly about um, trying to facilitate or trigger a social communication between the child and the parent. So at that point, that’s kind of how I imagine the success of it. It’s not so much about the complexity of the system or anything like that. #00:02:25-1#
respondent: Can I go and have a go? #00:02:27-8#
interviewer: Come on in, yeah. #00:02:28-2#
(long pause in conversation while respondent uses dome interface) #00:03:17-6#
respondent: Mmm hmm. #00:03:20-6#
interviewer: Um, so I’ll explain how it works. This is supposed to be a scale model of the space. For some reason, not everyone recognised… #00:03:31-4#
respondent: No, I did get that. #00:03:32-3#
interviewer: …the relationship. Um, which I find really fascinating. I think there’s a weird sense of this being the controlling interface when you’re looking down on it but you’re inside when you’re controlling. So the mapping- #00:03:46-7#
respondent: And maybe I wouldn’t have got it because we stood out there for so long. I observed the doorway echoed in this doorway because if you’re here just focusing on buttons, you might not- #00:03:59-3#
interviewer: You wouldn’t look at it, yeah. #00:04:00-2#
respondent: Yeah. #00:04:00-6#
interviewer: Um, so it’s divided into panels the same way that the tent is. And when they first, or anyone presses a button, the first I suppose step is the whole tent changes to that colour. It doesn’t matter where you press it on the dome. What I tried to do was to avoid repetitive behaviours. So as you remain within the same panel, the mapping becomes more complex so it ends up having a positional relationship between the interface and the corresponding segment. If they continue on at some point, the mapping is totally gone. #00:04:45-5#
respondent: Ohhh. #00:04:46-4#
interviewer: Um, and this is sort of the point that I’ve got to in the studies where I’m interested in this idea of sabotage which comes from educational psychology. So I try to establish control very quickly but then that can kind of encourage repetitive behaviours. If I take away control, does that sort of help them to express themselves in some way? So what I found, what’s the best example of that was a boy with autism who came in and immediately figured out this was a scale of notes and he just walked around the tent doing that (pressing buttons sequentially). So I’m watching from outside on the screen and I’ve got like a sabotage button as well. I sabotaged him and immediately he sat down and he said to his mother something like “Oh, can you try pressing that button?” He, like, straight away went into cooperative interaction rather than just being like a solitary way of interacting. Even when I turn the sabotage back off, he stayed in that kind of mode which is really interesting. Um, and that’s it. That’s where I’m at. #00:06:04-2#
respondent: (pause while pressing buttons) So what’s the most common behaviour? Is there a common behaviour? #00:06:16-1#
interviewer: Ahh, it depends a lot on the age. With adults, I generally see people looking for relationships, so they’ll press this one, the red button, this red button, this red button, and try to get something or press the two together but there’s just nothing that happens with that. I’ve got a 18 months old son who just hammers away at buttons, and because anything happens he’s quite happy to play like that. The age group I’m working with, I think there’s something developmentally that changes somewhere in that time between those kinda two ways of interacting so every kid was quite different. And, um, they sometimes looked like they were trying to find a pattern in the way that they could control it but it was pretty hard to kind of pick out. I still have to go through a lot of that video. Yeah, I think there’s some change that I probably need to get a bit of a handle on. #00:07:22-7#
respondent: So did any of them in the first time you had it not play at all? Like, did they come in and just go oh they want me to play so I’ll play, or did they…? #00:07:33-0#
interviewer: Yeah, actually I’ll show you the first two interfaces, cause that was the most successful I think (referring to final interface) because the connection the button press and the coloured light was just so instantaneous. Even if I didn’t get the positional relationship, they knew that that’s what was going on. These first two, so this is the first one and this is the second one. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Reactable. It was ahh, it was a musical collaborative interface where, um, I’ve got a video here, these tracking markers were tracked with a camera from underneath and so they can recognise the position and which marker was oriented where. Um, so that’s how they control the lights to start with, but the problem with that was there’s just no clear relationship with a flat… like, there was nothing on the surface to show them, put this here and this happens. So they played with these as blocks, like I would get kids kinda of piling them on top but not as an interface. I tried to get around that by playing on the peg-and-hole kind of game that kids are probably more familiar with. And that was quite interesting. So, some of them understood that, actually most of them understood that the coloured pig would trigger a corresponding coloured light. They didn’t, again didn’t understand the position because this was, probably because this was more complex so each segment had three lights and they could make each light individually change colour. #00:09:23-7#
respondent: But there’s no lights here today. #00:09:25-8#
interviewer: Ahh, not controlled by that, no. #00:09:28-4#
respondent: And where were the lights, underneath or on top or- #00:09:33-2#
interviewer: Oh, sorry, these surfaces were just where that dome model is there. So they’re interchangeable. So there was a camera underneath with both of those, and- #00:09:44-0#
respondent: Oh, and so the lights were still outside the tent? #00:09:46-0#
interviewer: Exactly, yeah. #00:09:46-4#
respondent: So the tent was always there. #00:09:47-8#
interviewer: Yep. It’s was pretty much exactly like this the whole way through. #00:09:50-3#
respondent: Yep. And did they come in here to do it, or you took it to some space that they were familiar with? #00:09:58-5#
interviewer: That’s what I wanted to do at first. I wanted to work within an institution, so I’ve built this with kind of mobility in mind, um, to work preferably within the school but I had a lot of trouble getting access to those kinds of places. Um, so in the end, it was always here but it was positioned sort of right in front of this door so they could walk straight in. And I generally found that they really enjoyed being in the space. It seemed like a good… point between feeling safe and contained but not claustrophobic, um, so feedback on that was good. #00:10:41-7#
respondent: (pause) And what’s that one there? (referring to dome model) #00:10:50-5#
interviewer: Okay, this is a I guess a critical design that I did fairly early on when I was trying to think through the technology. It uses a similar technology to this (referring to dome tent), but I was thinking about what would a narrative lighting, um, how could I tell a story through light changes and sound. And what I decided was it became way too complex, but what was great out of this one was I was starting to think through not so much what is it like to be autistic but a lot of people with autism have very particular sensory processing problems, and so I thought about if somebody was overstimulated by sound how would that change the way that they interact. So I made these headphones which have little microphones on them and they pick up quite different sound to what you’d normally, um, sense I guess. Like it picks up things like scuff shoes and weird tinkling noises. And it’s a little bit disorientating. #00:12:00-0#
respondent: But you didn’t use that with the children? #00:12:02-4#
interviewer: No. #00:12:02-9#
respondent: No, so that was just for you to understand their world? #00:12:06-5#
interviewer: Yeah, and kind of get feedback from other people as well. If you, you interact with this in a certain way as you are, as a neurotypical person, what, does it change in any way if you are processing senses in a different way? Um, so yeah, it was just a way of thinking through some of those ideas. I thought it was fairly successful as a prototype I guess. #00:12:40-6#
respondent: (pause) And so, that’s 1, 2, and that’s 3 (pointing out interface designs). And is this what- #00:12:53-6#
interviewer: So this is what’s running the dome (Max observation table). And this is, I set this up as basically what I saw when I was doing the studies. These are the cameras that are in there at the moment. Um, this, I just made a sabotage button so you can sabotage the people who are inside the dome. #00:13:12-8#
respondent: And, does it, it just randomises everything? #00:13:16-8#
interviewer: More or less, yeah. #00:13:18-1#
respondent: Yeah, so there’s no pattern to it. #00:13:20-0#
interviewer: Yeah, I really wanted to take away any control that they had. If I had more time, I would like to look at how they might re-engage the system if they cooperate with their parent. I think that would be really interesting kind of next step. It’s sort of problematic that I sabotaged them and the system and there’s nothing beyond that, but yeah, I just ran out of time. #00:13:50-8#
respondent: But at this point, that’s- #00:13:52-5#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:13:53-6#
respondent: So, um, okay. So that was working out the technology of controlling lights and sounds (referring to dome model). And you always knew you wanted to use buttons? #00:14:08-4#
interviewer: Um, I had that set up with pressure sensors originally and they weren’t working particularly well. Buttons I just found the most immediate, um, they’re quite tactile and reliable. #00:14:25-7#
respondent: We all like a good button. And what about these, so you were thinking about other tactile things? #00:14:31-6#
interviewer: This is something that came from my Honours project with a 2-year-old girl with autism. So this is what kind of led into my PhD. And this was specific to her, so this is the first device I created was looking at what sensory input does, is she attracted to and so this was like a RFID reader, pressure sensors, and proximity sensors. She was attracted to vibration, and so the second iteration of that was trying to separate vibration from material – I wasn’t sure which she was most interested in. It seemed it was the vibration and so the last thing I designed was a change table which had vibration motors through it. And to trigger it, a button needs to be pressed at opposing corners which are too far apart for her to do on her own so she needed to engage with her parent to make that happen. And that’s- #00:15:30-2#
respondent: Did it work? #00:15:31-2#
interviewer: It worked reasonably well. The second one was probably the most successful in terms of what she enjoyed. #00:15:37-3#
respondent: Yep, what, because it’s more playful? And you’re having, if it’s a change table, you’re having your nappy changed. They don’t like having their nappies changed, well no child does. (laughing) #00:15:45-5#
interviewer: Totally. #00:15:46-3#
respondent: So I’m presuming autistic children don’t need either. (laughing) #00:15:49-6#
interviewer: Yeah. The second one, I worked with a occupational therapist at the time and the second one when the girl realised her I guess ability to control the mode that she like, looked up in surprise at her mother, which the therapist identified as being really important in the development of the child. So that is really where the idea came from to explore it further in an environment. #00:16:18-6#
respondent: Okay. So do I just keep asking questions? #00:16:24-3#
interviewer: Oh no, so… #00:16:25-5#
respondent: I can. (laughing) #00:16:26-3#
interviewer: (laughing) What I’ve done on the floor is taped out how I step through my process, which I guess is from early ideas, to material studies, to prototyping, to iterative design and then the transcription is kind of my data analysis. So they’re just some interviews I did with ahh… they’re both from therapists and I just wanted to give a sense of what it’s like going through all that text. #00:16:57-3#
respondent: So it’s similar to what we’ve just done, in fact. #00:17:04-6#
interviewer: It will be very similar, yeah. (pause) Yeah, so, what would be great is to kind of talk about how you approach your work, because I know you do practice-based as well as theoretical- #00:17:20-1#
respondent: Yeah. #00:17:20-4#
interviewer: -work, don’t you? So, it doesn’t have to be about a practice-based work, but I’ve been mapping out other practitioners’ process on the floor and that gives me like another mapping or another way to sort of compare things. #00:17:34-8#
respondent: Meaning so like- #00:17:36-7#
interviewer: I’ve just got some chalk. #00:17:38-6#
respondent: Oh, okay. #00:17:40-0#
interviewer: So I had, for instance, I had people here last night and the woman was, ahh, she has a dance background and it came out, her process comes from I guess bodily exploration, so I drew like a person on the ground and then it responds to spaces so I drew a space. And then it became about material so I drew a line over to the material. #00:18:03-7#
respondent: Yep. Hmm, my projects are all very different so I’d have to pick one. So I will, immediately I think of the last one I did that was a tactile interactive kind of work, cause the more obvious connection to your one. Um, where did I start? Obviously with an idea. (laughing) Not necessarily I suppose, some people start in other points but I started with an idea. I did do, I did then explore material… it was partly material and it was partly, um- #00:18:48-0#
interviewer: I guess, an idea (drawing on ground). #00:18:49-9#
respondent: Because my focus was on play and fun, so I wanted to find an action that would trigger something to spin that was fun. And I thought of things that I thought would be fun and then test them out and they weren’t. (laughing) And in fact, I discovered, so I was doing spinning things that you blew on and then I had these rubber, you know like, blower bulbs to blow the dust of negatives? I had them, squeezing them because I thought oh, that will be nice and tactile and feel good to squeeze them and make the thing move. And, um, I can’t remember, because I had ones that looked a bit like um, spinning wheels, err, what’s the word for them, you know, the things that pull up water on farms, the big- #00:19:40-7#
interviewer: Oh, windmills. #00:19:41-2#
respondent: Windmills. Looked like a windmill kind of thing, and somewhere in there I ended up with an actual wheel that you could spin with your hand. And at that point I was doing stuff with it and I just was spinning it with my hand and I was going, you know what, this is the most fun thing because you had the most direct control over it, so it was about control. #00:20:01-6#
interviewer: So that’s, it kinda goes a bit past material studies though, doesn’t it. It’s like a… #00:20:06-6#
respondent: Yeah. #00:20:07-2#
interviewer: What would you call that? #00:20:08-7#
respondent: So it wasn’t that. (pointing at drawing on floor) #00:20:11-5#
interviewer: Experiential sort of- #00:20:12-5#
respondent: Was that plus- #00:20:13-9#
interviewer: Yeah, the body. #00:20:16-3#
respondent: Yeah. #00:20:17-0#
interviewer: Um, okay. Let’s draw a person here… #00:20:21-6#
respondent: Okay, so then once I’d decided that, um, I then linked it to decide I was, wanted visuals as well as the spinning thing, and somehow, somewhere in there I made a link to old animation devices, you know the old um, spinning wheels with the slits in them that they used to have? #00:20:52-1#
interviewer: Like zoetropes? #00:20:52-1#
respondent: Yeah zoetropes, and the one I used, the model was called a phenakistascope (?) or a phantasmascope it used to be called. And so it had a mirror there and the picture was on the back of the wheel and so you looked through the slit at the reflection of the picture as you spun it around. So, I built a model of that and tested it with people. #00:21:17-7#
interviewer: Mmm hmm. So it will be the- (drawing on ground) Yep. #00:21:24-0#
respondent: And admittedly I was doing PhD at the time. (laughing) So… #00:21:27-9#
interviewer: You were doing many other things. #00:21:29-9#
respondent: No, no, I’m saying this was part of the PhD so possibly the similarity in process might be because it’s a PhD process as well. Like so if you were doing it for yourself I wouldn’t have done the formal testing… so much. I would have, might have tested it on friends or whatever but i don’t, that was quite formal testing because it was part of a PhD, so I don’t know what you think, whether you would have done that many… well, because you’re working with a real context whereas mine wasn’t. #00:22:03-7#
interviewer: A very specific group, yeah. #00:22:04-3#
respondent: Yeah, so that definitely lends itself to that but I don’t know. If I wasn’t necessarily doing a PhD if I would have done that much of that. Um… and then based on that, I built another iteration. So one more iteration and that was it, um, and that involved a lot of design. I had to design it, because it was installed in the Powerhouse Museum, so it required a very solid installation cabinet because they don’t have any invigilators there, and there are heaps of school kids that come through and touch everything, so it had to be really strong to survive that. So, I had to design something and then get a carpenter to make it. All the while I was working on the content, I ended up working with a screen instead of the paper version that I had before, and so I worked on the content for the screen. And there would… yeah. #00:23:15-9#
interviewer: So I guess then you’re outsourcing the… a lot of the practical component… #00:23:23-2#
respondent: Just the container that contained it, yeah. Because the whole rest of it, and I had to get the wheel, the final wheel with laser cut as well so I didn’t do that. Someone else did that, yeah. But the, all the electronics and the coding and the visual content, I created. I didn’t create the electronics, I bought them. (laughing) You could put ‘buying’ in there. (laughing) #00:24:01-1#
interviewer: (laughing) Oh that’d definitely be very similar to my process in there. #00:24:04-5#
respondent: Yeah. Um, yeah. #00:24:08-8#
interviewer: Okay. But then I suppose the exhibition is a big part of that process as well, isn’t it? #00:24:16-9#
respondent: Yes. #00:24:17-6#
interviewer: Um, which isn’t, probably not so much part of mine. #00:24:21-8#
respondent: And because it was a PhD, I did more studies in the exhibition as well. #00:24:31-0#
interviewer: Yeah, of course. Ahh… How did, so how did you get feedback for the studies? Questionnaires and… #00:24:40-3#
respondent: I did, so that was part of… do you know Lizzie Muller and George Khut who were here? I was at CCS at the same time as Lizzie at UTS and Lizzie and I did a study together on methods for analysing exhibition art and came- #00:25:00-1#
interviewer: Is that the video-cued recall? #00:25:00-9#
respondent: Yeah, video-cued recall. So the first study done, what was that there, that first study (pointing to chalk drawing) that was video-cued recall, that one. And that was done more in a laboratory setting. Um, we set people who came in and for this study I’ve got some of the same people to come back and um, some new people as well. And we didn’t do video-cued recall… because… um, we did do a survey and I learned a lot about writing bad surveys and good surveys (laughing). Um, we did an interview and a survey, just because of the time factor. To do the video-cued recall, you need, in that environment you needed a whole separate room you could take people off to, replay their tape… you know. It just meant in terms of how long it was going to take you to do 15 people, it was way, way too many. Plus the work, when I did that test I was testing two other works I’d done as well and they were much more physical works. Whereas this one you were spinning a wheel and looking through it right, and you could do things to the wheel but in fact the video of what your body was doing didn’t say much. Most of it was going on in what you were thinking and feeling while you’re doing it, so yeah, I ended up deciding playing people back a video of themselves spinning a wheel was not actually going to trigger much, whereas the other works that we’d done it with were much more physical works where you know, you were getting obvious responses on the screen and you were moving your body in very obvious ways. #00:26:49-3#
interviewer: Yeah. And, so in that project, did you try and measure success at all of the project? #00:26:59-2#
respondent: Um, it’s a good question. And the question is how did I, did I define the success before I managed to… and then try to measure it. I had an aim, what would I say, so I was trying to make people play right, to make people play with something. So, as part of that I was thinking about what’s the thing that indicates whether someone has played with it, and you would have a similar thing with this, is it how long I spend with it, is it the amount of things they try, is it what their face looks like while they’re doing it, if they have a sense of enjoyment while they’re doing it, does that make it play, does it not matter how short it is or how long it is? Lots of questions, so I would say you know, personally I don’t think you can exactly. I found the numbers very seductive… #00:28:04-2#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:28:05-0#
respondent: …and I almost wanted to write a paper about the seduction of numbers when you’re not coming from a numbers background is once you can get numbers you start to be going “Oh, 15 out of 20 do this and 2 out of 3 do that.” But in reality it doesn’t mean much, I don’t think. So it was easy to get seduced by all that and not to focus in on what actually matters. So, um… what I ended up doing as you do a lot when you do a PhD is come up with a framework where I was thinking about what kinds of things do people get pleasure from when they’re playing and that’s what I tried to identify in the first study. #00:28:47-1#
interviewer: Mmm hmm. #00:28:47-6#
respondent: And then I applied what I’d learned there in this design and so here we go, we’re getting to the success through a roundabout method. So I was trying to see does, do those things that I especially designed in there thinking that they would make people want to play, have they achieved that thing. And obviously you can’t say definitively yes, they have or they haven’t, but what I regarded as measure of success was what things people talked about, what did they mention as bits that they enjoyed or didn’t enjoy, what things did they enjoy playing with, like they will asked that question and if they said some of the things I’ve designed in. Um, I did also, because I developed that framework which I ended up deciding was a really useful way… you know, people are very thingy about you classifying stuff that obviously is an enormous spectrum and as soon as you try and break it into chunks then there’s things you’re ignoring. #00:29:47-3#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:29:47-8#
respondent: Um, but I did find it useful mainly in this evaluation point for developing a language that we could share. So I explained the categories that I had and said to people “Did you see any of those in there?” but when I explain the categories to them particularly in that first study which had more time and more things in it, people would ask me questions “Oh, what do you mean by that?” and blah-blah-blah. And what I found then was then when they talked back to me, they were using those kind of words, because often I think in these kind of studies it’s almost like you need, people almost need, it’s like they need a contextualisation to be able to explain something, if they don’t have the language to express what they’re feeling. So you could say I was putting words in their mouth, sure, (laughing) or you could say we were developing a shared language. I thought it worked a bit like that. #00:30:47-8#
interviewer: Okay. #00:30:48-3#
respondent: I don’t think people said stuff to me, said stuff was in there because they, that they didn’t see particularly. Um… yeah, so if they mentioned those bits that I’ve designed in there I regarded that it’s a bit of a success. So I was trying to see with that framework if I used it as a, to help me design, so if I thought about how experientially I wanted to feel a bit like this, then when I spoke to people, where they, once we have the shared language were they seeing the same things in there and not just seeing them. Because in that first one, somebody saw something I had tried to design in there but they saw it as a, in a way you know, like when they put the violins on in a movie to try to make you cry, sometimes it makes you cry but you still in your head know that they’re forcing you to cry, rather you’re not really crying. In that one I got comments from people that was kind of like “Well, I can see that you’re trying to do this but it’s not really doing it to me.” (laughing) Whereas this one was more successful. #00:31:57-9#
interviewer: Okay, that’s great. #00:32:00-9#
respondent: There you go. Use the word success. #00:32:02-2#
interviewer: (laughing) That’s really interesting. #00:32:05-3#
respondent: So it was more about, the success was more about trying to get a match between experientially what I was trying to create and what the audience got out of it as an experience. And, yeah. That was a measure of success. If I had felt that those two things meshed in some way, but in fact as usually with the stuff, I’m sure everybody is the same, the bits that excite you the most are when someone gets something even more. #00:32:33-0#
interviewer: Yeah, absolutely. And then how do you… how do those kind of outliers I guess become… how do you get more out of those? How do you frame, not frame things around them, but… #00:32:48-7#
respondent: Yeah, I think it is a lot about framing, about contextualising and that’s what’s nice about your tent. #00:32:56-1#
interviewer: A literal framing. #00:32:57-6#
respondent: Yeah. #00:32:58-3#
interviewer: Yeah, I think… the environment, the space itself was probably the most successful part of this. #00:33:09-2#
respondent: And how did you, did you interview the parents? How old were the children again? #00:33:16-5#
interviewer: Children were between 3 and 5, and I took your video-cued recall method, and… and so I took that video- #00:33:25-0#
respondent: How did you find it? #00:33:26-5#
interviewer: It was a good starting point. Um, it was difficult to keep them on the video. It started a conversation, particularly because most of the parents- #00:33:38-7#
respondent: How long was the… #00:33:39-2#
interviewer: Oh, about 10 minutes, 10 to 20 minutes. #00:33:42-1#
respondent: Oh yeah. Oh well that’s not too bad. #00:33:42-6#
interviewer: Particularly because the parents often had no experience with the kind of way I was questioning. They looked like sometimes they’re a little bit sort of “What is this guy talking about?” Having the video there for them to focus on I think made them feel more comfortable. I can talk about that because it was in front of me and that started conversations about you know, the kid going to school and stuff that happened outside of the space, which was really, it put them into a lot of context for me, why they responded in certain ways. So it was really useful for that. It was rare for them to come back to the video after that once I got talking. #00:34:25-5#
respondent: Because the way we did it, the researcher sat behind. They sat in front facing the video so they’re not even looking at us and we kinda weren’t allowed to say anything really. If they stopped talking you kind of would wait for something that you thought looked a bit interesting and say “Oh why did you press that button?” and get them to say something, but that was the first time when we… not in my studies, but we did a couple of studies for other people beforehand. Um, you definitely learn that some people are better at talking out loud than other people, like particularly males of a certain age were very reticent to talk. #00:35:09-5#
interviewer: Okay. #00:35:10-1#
interviewer: Whereas people who have a more artistic background or performance background, one of my colleagues at UNSW is from theatre and performance, she could just talk till the cows came home. (laughing) And that’s where you kind of went, and that’s why I used some of the same people again too as I was going “You know what … ” It’s this sense that you’re getting raw experience from people as if you can kind of, you know, you don’t want to influence them too much and all that bias and you worry so much about that, but what you’re asking them to do is actually a task that involves skills. And choosing a participant is not just about choosing a person who is from your demographic. It can also be about choosing a person who matches the method you’re doing… or giving them some training in that method. So, when I’ve seen the people the second time, that I did for my second study, I’ve done it in my first without realising and then I decided that was a good thing, I’d used people I knew, well like my friend from theatre and performance and friends I knew who were filmmakers and other kinds of artists, as well as people who weren’t and I realised they gave me very different data to the other people. So that kind of peer feedback thing which I suppose you’re doing in a way here, I found really useful and they definitely responded fairly well to doing it twice… because, yeah. #00:36:42-6#
interviewer: The familiarity. #00:36:43-8#
respondent: And they’re less scared, it’s quite scary being a participant in a research study. #00:36:48-4#
interviewer: Yeah, totally. Yeah, I think it was helpful for making them feel more comfortable and the kids too who- #00:36:56-9#
respondent: Were there any of them verbal or not? #00:37:00-1#
interviewer: Reasonably. Um, they were, the autistic children I had were high-functioning. Um, it would’ve been interesting to look at low-functioning but I couldn’t get access to them. And so they would say during the interview process afterwards… I had one boy who didn’t appear to really show an awareness of what he was doing inside the space. It was with this interface, second one, and suddenly he’s piped up outside when we we’re looking at the video, he goes “Yeah, yellow pegs make the yellow lights go on.” I was like, he wasn’t looking at the interface at all. Um, I was stunned, he knew exactly what, probably more than any other what was going on. And I interviewed a woman later who has an autism diagnosis and she told me that the lights that I was using underneath had like this really sharp quality for her and she thought that he was probably, that was his way of filtering that light out. So he was just looking away to kind of avoid that overstimulation of light. Um, so yeah, that kind of stuff was really interesting. #00:38:17-4#
respondent: (pause) And what differences were there between the neurotypical… #00:38:25-8#
interviewer: And the autistic children? Um… the boy particularly was very much looking for patterns. Um, so in this second one, he was trying to group colours a lot. He didn’t seem so concerned about the response of the space. He just wanted those objects together um, and he was the one who did, he went around and around and around. Um, the girl was quite reserved, um… but the other kids, I think they got bored a little bit quicker which was interesting. Maybe the age group too. I had one kid, one neurotypical kid who just ran around in circles and just enjoyed being in the space and got over the interaction pretty quickly. Um, so yeah, they’re all really different. And I have to go back through those videos in a lot more detail and try to pick out interesting events to- #00:39:26-8#
respondent: But the aim for you was to get the parents and the children interacting together in a particular way or… #00:39:35-0#
interviewer: Ahh, no, not really in a particular way. Um, I wanted the interaction to trigger that social engagement whether, even if it was just joint attention, but I often saw them verbally asking for help or the child would suggest if you press a button here, when I press it here, sort of cooperative interaction, that was great. Um, yeah, so I guess there’s a lot of different types. #00:40:07-5#
respondent: And did you have any new kids in here or only ones who had already done those two? #00:40:12-1#
interviewer: The typical kids end up doing all three. The autistic kids, only the second and third. Um, I didn’t really see a huge difference in the autistic kids their second time around in terms of like, being more comfortable or anything like that. Um, the typical kids definitely between the first and second time, they were a lot more comfortable. Um, but perhaps that’s just my interpretation of behaviours. #00:40:46-4#
respondent: (pause) Oh, no I did get someone to help me code as well at a certain point. We ran out of time. (laughing) Something wasn’t working. #00:41:04-8#
interviewer: Okay. I’ve experienced exactly the same thing. (laughing) #00:41:06-7#
respondent: Help. #00:41:07-3#
interviewer: I’d put that in with the saw (referring to chalk drawing). #00:41:08-8#
respondent: It’s not working, can you pay someone. (laughing) #00:41:10-8#
interviewer: Yeah. That’s how this diagram came about (referring to photo of flow diagram), trying to explain my Max patch to someone who hadn’t seen it before, so kind of working out the logic with him. #00:41:20-4#
respondent: I know. #00:41:21-4#
interviewer: (pause) Okay, I might switch it off… #00:41:28-2#
respondent: Okay. #00:41:28-8#
interviewer: …here. #00:41:29-9#
—
Industrial designer
respondent: (laughing) #00:00:15-4#
interviewer: Um… I kinda just talk about my process and where I ended up and then I want to ask you a few questions about your process, and how, or whether that like matches mine in any way. #00:00:29-1#
respondent: Okay. #00:00:29-7#
interviewer: Or, you know, how it’s different. Um… I haven’t told you anything about my research, have I? #00:00:38-0#
respondent: No. #00:00:38-5#
interviewer: Okay. So this is kind of the material focus of it, I guess. Um, it’s a space that was designed for autistic children between about three and five years. I did three iterations of the study with them in the space. They come in um, with their parent, it just always happened to be their mother. Um, so it’s just one child and one parent at a time. It’s non-directed. They go in and I film them interacting in whatever way they like, um, and they can leave whenever they like, which tended to be between about ten or fifteen minutes. Which is probably roughly how long most that we’re in for. Um, I only had two autistic children, um, just because I had trouble getting access to participants. But I had four typical kids doing the studies as well. #00:01:35-1#
respondent: Okay. #00:01:35-4#
interviewer: All right. I’ll go in… #00:01:39-5#
respondent: What kind of a like, level of social interaction and communication skills do they have? The two… #00:01:45-5#
interviewer: They’re both high-functioning. The reason, what I found was that, and you might come across this as well… Um, because funding for autistic services through the government is linked to evidence based approaches… #00:02:03-1#
respondent: Yeah. #00:02:03-5#
interviewer: …those services couldn’t pass on their clients to me because this isn’t an evidence based approach. #00:02:10-7#
respondent: Ohhh. #00:02:11-6#
interviewer: Nobody told me that early on. So I spent probably twelve or eighteen months just kind of banging my head against the wall, like why won’t people me help out. Everyone was like, “This is really interesting, but we can’t help you. Sorry.” Um, so in the end, the kids that did get involved, um, my partner is a psychologist, and she just had like networks on Facebook. And so those two kids didn’t have access to services, because they’re too high-functioning, um, but they do have a diagnosis. So, because they didn’t have access to services they were free to come and be a part of it. #00:02:45-9#
respondent: Interesting. #00:02:47-3#
interviewer: So, I guess your options if you’re kind of facing something similar are, you either get on board with a service of some sort, um, which can be difficult. #00:02:59-9#
respondent: Yeah, that’s what I’m facing right now. (pause) You kind of start talking to them, but then, yeah, it’s really hard. It’s really hard for them to accept something new. #00:03:14-6#
interviewer: Yeah. I, OT, occupational therapists and teachers, kind of those frontline people, are all really open to the idea. But it’s the bureaucracy of them which stops them from… #00:03:26-2#
respondent: It’s so funny because it works really different here than in Mexico. #00:03:29-2#
interviewer: Yeah? #00:03:29-8#
respondent: Mexico’s more like family-based everything. There is not as much business involved. It’s more like because you want to help because no one has much resources anyway. Here everything is very business like and it’s weird. #00:03:45-3#
interviewer: I think that’s something that’s changed in the last sort of four or five years. Because I did this project for my Honours work, which was in 2011, um, and I worked with Aspect. They were really interested, I worked with one of their OT’s in their Building Blocks, early intervention program, for a year. And it was no problem at all. So I started this kind of a bit naïve. #00:04:13-7#
respondent: And you’re like, “Yes!” #00:04:13-8#
interviewer: Yeah, I was like, “Everything will be fine.” And it really wasn’t. So Aspect, I mean they’re such a big organisation, and now they’re research division is kind of like… I think they make a lot of money, and, well they get a lot of research funding, and they’re get quite protective of that. So, they do have systems in place, um, but if you’re not from like a psychology or science background… #00:04:42-3#
respondent: Yeah, it’s hard. #00:04:43-1#
interviewer: It’ll be tough, yeah. But it’s possible, you just have to be prepared to kind of do a lot of work to get in there. (cough) They’ve got they’re own ethics process at Aspect. #00:04:56-6#
respondent: Oh, okay. #00:04:57-2#
interviewer: So you’d have to do… #00:04:59-0#
respondent: Which is not that… Yeah. #00:05:00-6#
interviewer: I think it makes sense. #00:05:02-0#
respondent: Yep. It makes more sense how you’re doing it. #00:05:05-9#
interviewer: Sorry? #00:05:07-6#
respondent: It makes more sense, I guess. #00:05:09-4#
interviewer: Yeah. They’ve got a duty of care for their kids. So, yeah. Anyway, come on in. (entering dome space) #00:05:16-9#
respondent: Nice. #00:05:17-9#
interviewer: Um… I’m always interested to see how people use it before I explain how it works. #00:05:25-3#
respondent: Okay. #00:05:25-4#
interviewer: So go for it. #00:05:27-4#
(long pause in conversation while using interface)
respondent: It’s so nice. Can you do two? (pause) Mmm. Is this supposed to be like for a collaboration? #00:06:10-4#
interviewer: Ahh, This was the third… #00:06:14-5#
respondent: Oh, it’s more like… #00:06:14-5#
interviewer: The third iteration of the interface. Um, I’ll show you the other two when we go out. (cough) But the table structure is, yeah, very much to try and get the parent and child interacting in some way. Um, so the way that the system works is when they first come in they generally just press a button and the entire tent changes that colour. So I’m trying to kind of establish their awareness of control really explicitly, really quickly. The change in the system happens if they remain in the same segment, so each is obviously divided up into these three buttons and if they stay in the same segment the mapping becomes more complex. So it becomes mapped to the same segment, model as the tent… Um, that was kind of a little bit tricky for people to, I guess, be aware of. I think because you’re looking down at the object that you’re controlling from the inside, there’s like this… #00:07:29-4#
respondent: Yeah. #00:07:30-5#
interviewer: Especially because of the light behind you as well. So that, I think that wasn’t the most successful part. If they continue on in the same place for long enough, the mapping is totally removed. Um, and so that’s something that I started referring to as “sabotage”, which comes from psychology. The way it’s used in educational psychology is once you kind of see the child is interested or interacting in some way, you take away the feedback or the the reward. #00:08:13-0#
respondent: Yeah, like they’re being forced to… #00:08:14-4#
interviewer: To kind of motivate them to show a different behaviour. The best example I had was one of the autistic boys came in and like he immediately figured out this was a scale, and he went around and around and around. And so the sabotage is programmed into the interaction, but I also had… Um, I’ve got these video cameras here and I was viewing it from outside and I’ve got a switch to turn on, to sabotage them from outside. And as soon as I did he stopped and sat down and spoke to his mom and they like tried to figure it out together, and it immediately became cooperative interaction. Straightaway. #00:08:55-4#
respondent: Wow. #00:08:55-9#
interviewer: And even when I turned sabotage off again, um, so it worked in a clear way, he didn’t go back to that repetitive behaviour. So that was really interesting. Most of the kids seemed… kind of like it was a puzzle once it was sabotaged. I don’t know if they were more engaged, but they did give me more interesting behaviours to kind of look at. And none of them were upset by the sabotaging of it. But I think that might be different with low-functioning kids, I would imagine. #00:09:39-7#
respondent: Yeah. It would be interesting to see what happens. #00:09:42-0#
interviewer: Yeah. (cough) #00:09:45-2#
respondent: Nice. Interesting. #00:09:48-0#
interviewer: That’s kind of where I got to as far as the prototyping went. And I’ll show you the earlier interfaces. (leaving dome space) So this is what I saw, the way I was controlling it from outside, these are the three cameras in the tent. And I just made a sabotage button for the exhibition. (laughing) Um, yeah. This was the first interface. Have you seen a Reactable? #00:10:20-7#
respondent: Yeah. #00:10:21-0#
interviewer: Yeah. Exactly the same. Um, these surfaces just sat on top of the table, where the dome is now. This was way too abstract for the first kid… um, for that age group of kids. Because there was no reference on the surface to what it was mapped to. #00:10:38-4#
respondent: Hard to match, yeah. #00:10:39-1#
interviewer: So I went to this design the second time… #00:10:42-8#
respondent: Something simple. #00:10:41-8#
interviewer: …just a peg in a hole type thing. So each… um, again it’s divided up into segments. If you imagine lines running across it, and each segment has three lights. So you could um, change the colour of each individually, which I think was a little bit too complex again. And also the way I had the camera inside the table for these two interfaces, I needed lighting underneath the surface, and I used these LEDs. And one of the boys with autism um, he couldn’t look directly at it, like the quality of that light was way too harsh for him. #00:11:24-8#
respondent: Oh. Yeah, that’s a problem. #00:11:26-6#
interviewer: Yeah, which I didn’t even think about when I was designing it. He still interacted, but he kind of looked away, like that the whole time. And I thought that he wasn’t really very interested in it, but after I gave him time inside the space, I interviewed the mother and child afterwards, and he said, “Yeah, yellow pegs makes the yellow light go on.” So he was totally aware of what was happening. He just couldn’t look straight at it, because it was too much for him. #00:11:56-3#
respondent: Interesting. #00:12:00-2#
interviewer: And so I ended up with the scale model. #00:12:03-7#
respondent: With that one. Buttons. #00:12:04-0#
interviewer: Um, which I think was by far the most successful, because the buttons are so immediate. #00:12:08-9#
respondent: Yeah. #00:12:09-7#
interviewer: Straightaway you understand those controls. #00:12:14-1#
respondent: What’s going on, yeah. #00:12:14-8#
interviewer: Whereas the cameras always have a little bit of lag. #00:12:17-6#
respondent: Cool. Yeah. I like it. I like it. #00:12:26-3#
interviewer: Um… what I’ve done on the floor is kind of mapped out how my process (cough) kind of unfolded over the last few years. So I went from like the Honours idea, which led to all of this, to some material studies, to a prototype. So this one was, first of all to kind of play with the same technology that I’m using over here. But I also had these headphones that I put microphones on, um, that pick up sound in a really strange way, and I wanted to kind of think through not what it will like to be sort of autistic, but like if you had a… if you’re overstimulated by sound, would that change the way you interact with something? So I guess it was kind of like critical design, um, which was an interesting part of the process, but… #00:13:28-6#
respondent: Nice. #00:13:29-4#
interviewer: …the lighting and sound that I was working with here was… I was at the time planning on doing like a narrative experience in this space, but it was just too much. So I moved away from that. #00:13:45-6#
respondent: But you did like some user testing though, like…? #00:13:50-1#
interviewer: I had it in the gallery here actually, so it was not for an autistic population. It was… #00:13:58-1#
respondent: Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like the inverse, just to see. #00:14:00-4#
interviewer: Yeah. Yeah. #00:14:01-3#
respondent: Have you got any interesting… #00:14:02-9#
interviewer: A lot of people felt really alienated by the headphones. Um, because they pick up like the scuffing of shoes, and if there’s a full room, like the chatter of… yeah. #00:14:14-4#
respondent: Oh, woah. Yeah. #00:14:16-1#
interviewer: It’s kind of off putting. And I think that’s a good thing to kind of help people talk about some of their ideas of sensory processing problems. #00:14:26-8#
respondent: Nice. #00:14:27-8#
interviewer: So it was yeah, it was a nice conversation starter. And then I went into the interface design. And kind back and forth between those iterations and my data is mostly just interview transcripts. So I’ve got the interviews with the parents and kids and also interviews with therapists. That was kind of the way I worked. I got around the problem of not having enough participants, I talked to like occupational therapists and diversional therapists and people like that, about how this space could be used in their practice. Um, when I first started designing it, I still thought I was going to work in an institution. So it’s designed to be mobile and fit within a classroom and all this kind of stuff. #00:15:16-6#
respondent: Well, hopefully. #00:15:18-4#
interviewer: I think there’s a lot of things that I need to revisit to do that. Especially the kind of cabling around the outside and all that sort of stuff, but… #00:15:31-1#
respondent: It’s just like details. #00:15:32-0#
interviewer: Yeah, it could get there. Um, i’m sort of thinking about the PhD now as more of a pilot study. Um, and hopefully I can come back to it with psychologists or somebody… #00:15:45-7#
respondent: Yeah, why not. Great. #00:15:50-5#
interviewer: Yeah. So that’s it. Um, so I wanted to ask kind of how that process compares to your… because you’ve got industrial design training. #00:16:04-9#
respondent: Yeah, I have a background in industrial design. And I did my masters at Sydney Uni, of Interaction Design. So… I don’t know, because I kind of had it from before. When I did the bachelor, I had to do kind of social service. It’s like part of the requirements for graduation. And I did it at school for children with disabilities. Well, children, not children children. Because we have like from four years to sixty-five. #00:16:32-6#
interviewer: Right. #00:16:33-2#
respondent: Yeah, and with all kind of like different disabilities. And probably the two children with autism that we had were the most like left apart, because no one knew how to deal with them. Because no one knew how to change or how to intervene in behaviour, so it was just like they leave him in the corner doing whatever he wants because we can’t help him. And yeah, it works very very different from here. Because there you have like one teacher and probably one occupational therapist and another assistant for twenty-five children. So it was kind of a wake up call. I have a niece with autism as well, she’s low-communication, but she’s very relaxed. Well, I think. Yeah, but sometimes she had like also all kind of different repetitive behaviours that neither me or her parents could like completely understand. It was like “Okay, it looks like she’s okay. I’m just going to leave her for four hours doing the same.” #00:17:35-7#
interviewer: Mmm hmm. #00:17:36-2#
respondent: And for me that’s not normal. And that was kind of my trigger to try to do something. So at the start, it was just like that motivation, I was like, “I want to do something to understand them better.” Because that was my problem. Problem is my need, and I’m trying to find my need, to someone that … something that actually someone else can use, not just me. Obviously. And um, well I first tried to talk to a therapist, not children, like not to parents itself. Because I know that parents can be a bit, I don’t know… They kind of mislead information and they’re like very attached to their own parental feelings. And sometimes it’s really hard to get like useful information from them. So I went directly into like therapists. Um, well here in Australia we know that it works very different. So I went to do like training in ABA Therapy and trying to talk to them. And it was um, interesting, but at the same time I realised that I didn’t know much about it. And that, at least in my case, that I actually need to attach to a certain or a certain types of interventions methods if I really want it to work. Because what I want to do is kind of use physiological signals to know the stress state, but not just to tell people that, “Oh, he’s actually anxious.” But for recording events that can be useful later in like, analysing the progress of the child, and then it can be useful for intervention. And then probably you can, like on a later later later stage, maybe parents an actually use it in to get like reminders of those events. Like what happens in those events and what to do and what not to do. Um, so, yeah, it was more like talking to therapists. Um, the more I know about intervention methods the more I don’t know what to do. Because I guess it deals a lot with ethics, personal ethics. #00:19:42-9#
interviewer: Mmm. #00:19:43-7#
respondent: Cause, yeah, this time I went to a workshop with like a lot of people working in the area and two of the organisers were people with autism, high functioning, and actually like researchers. But they were like telling us a lot of stuff not to do, and, yeah, it was kind of a shock. I was like, “Oh, God. I want this to work.” But then it’s kind of, I don’t know, weird. So I think balancing like in professional minds. And I hope that at a stage where I’m fully aware of what I want to do, what I need to do for it to work, then I can go and actually go for users and try to test it with users. But I’m targeting low functioning. #00:20:28-9#
interviewer: Are you targeting children? #00:20:31-0#
respondent: Yes. #00:20:33-0#
interviewer: Yep. Okay. Um, you might like speaking to, um, there’s a PhD candidate here, high-functioning autism. She wasn’t diagnosed until she was in her forties. #00:20:47-0#
respondent: Mmm, that’s very common. #00:20:48-5#
interviewer: Yeah, yeah. #00:20:49-5#
respondent: That’s weird. #00:20:49-9#
interviewer: Um, so she was sort of forced to learn how to behave typically, but understands, like can articulate what it’s like to be autistic and she’s amazing. Because she’s part of our research group and I actually found that after I started speaking to her it helped the way that I designed a lot. #00:21:14-9#
respondent: Yep. Sorry, I’m going to get a tissue. (laughing) #00:21:20-0#
interviewer: (laughing) Um, yeah, I mean she was the one who pointed out that boy may not be looking at the surface because of the lighting. #00:21:29-5#
respondent: The lights. #00:21:29-9#
interviewer: He didn’t say that, but she was like, “No, that totally makes sense. It’s the way he kind of filters out that information.” #00:21:36-0#
respondent: I have a list of um… like obviously… So this workshop was in UK and it was more of designing web based technology for people with autism. They’re working on this project to make university life easier for people with autism. So they have like a really good team, and they have like a short guideline for you to just like go through before getting your participants in with autism. So just like a checklist of like, oh lights, oh that one, oh colours. And I don’t know if … I might sent it to you if you’re interested. #00:22:17-5#
interviewer: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. #00:22:19-4#
respondent: It’s just like a good checklist. #00:22:20-6#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:22:21-2#
respondent: But, yeah, it’s true, like you need someone with autism to actually say, “Okay, yeah. You’re on the right track.” #00:22:30-3#
interviewer: Yeah, I really got more appreciation for self-advocates going through this as well. It changed the way I… even the terminology that I use, and I use identity-first instead of person-first language. I’ll say, “autistic person” instead of “person with autism”. I mean that’s probably my personal experience with this woman who’s the PhD candidate, who sort of believes that her autism is such a part of who she is and the way she is in the world, that it defines her, it’s not separable from her. #00:23:16-9#
respondent: And it’s funny. Yeah. Because then you go into a therapy, it’s like ABA, which is like super structured and super strict. And then they will tell you… or she was telling me like, “Well, I have friends that have gone through it and they can’t say no.” Because they’re trained to say yes and to just act. And that’s huge. It’s like, wow. You can see results probably very quickly, and some part of it could be amazing because they actually have a better life, but in some others it’s like, well… #00:23:49-6#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:23:50-8#
respondent: It’s complicated. #00:23:53-6#
interviewer: Yeah, definitely. #00:23:55-6#
respondent: How did you get into autism? #00:24:00-6#
interviewer: Um, in my undergrad, I did my undergrad here, Bachelor of Digital Media. I kind of started working a lot with interactive sensory technologies, not screen based. And um, I have a friend who works at an Aspect school, and just through talking with her she felt this kind of stuff would be really interesting to explore with kids. Um, and so that’s how I got into this project with a two year-old girl with autism. So this was really about trying to find… she wasn’t verbal, at least at the time, um, and we were interested in what sensory experiences she was attracted to. So over a year I kind of… This first device was to kind of give her some sensory options, and then the next one was to… It turned out that she was interested in vibration, and I wanted to look at whether it was actually the vibration or the materiality she was interested in. So the second device separated those, and the final one was a change table for her and her mother, where the triggers for the vibration beneath the surface were too far apart for her to do on her own, so she needed to actually ask her mom to help her make that happen. So I was heading towards cooperative interaction, which kind of is how I ended up here. #00:25:25-2#
respondent: Mmm hmm. Nice. Yeah, it’s good to see people working in this area. It’s nice. (laughing) #00:25:35-8#
interviewer: Yeah, there’s a quite a few people popping up around the place. It’s really good. When I first started I felt like I was a bit on my own. Um, so I’m really trying to make sure everyone connects now, and other people find a bit easier. #00:25:50-6#
respondent: Yeah, I think it gives you a bit of inspiration and energy. Because when I went there, I mean there is a lot of people working in that, but most of them were like, “Oh, the project died because we couldn’t have funds anymore.” And I was like, “Wow, you’re forty-two group, like forty-two, working for three years on something that you just let die.” And I’m like, okay, (incomprehensible) #00:26:17-3#
interviewer: This um, these people who are working at main campus, that we’re meeting up with in a couple of weeks. I did an interview with the OT, who… I don’t know if you’ve heard of AutismCRC. It’s a large umbrella group, so there’s… researchers from lots of different institutions across the country. And they’ve got about thirty million dollars of funding over eight years, so she said, “We really want to connect with people from other faculties and other universities who are doing different work. And as little grants come up, we’d be interested in you applying and connecting with us that way.” And she was really interested in this kind of work. Which is great, I think she’ll be a really good contact. #00:27:09-2#
respondent: It would be awesome. I get like, I guess like the more support that you have from that high. Yeah. It’s better… #00:27:24-0#
interviewer: So with your industrial design background, how would, if you were for instance going to create something like this, if this was the finished product, would you go through a similar process to what I did? Would you do sort of the user testing and iterative design? #00:27:44-4#
respondent: Yeah, for sure. And I would try, probably because I have that in mind. Like probably the technology and everything has to be developed before testing it, but then user testing it’s a little a bit also about user… in certain part like collaboration. So to give different options that it can choose their preferred one. Because, yeah… So, yeah, I would go through user testing, but since I… I don’t know, like very interested in materials, probably I would. I don’t know. Have a little set of like, “would you like to”… Because you have an amazing space and maybe you could, I don’t know, transform into something a bit more tangible. Like you have tangible those, so why not the rest. I don’t know. I like it. #00:28:35-1#
interviewer: Have you come across technology probes? #00:28:37-9#
respondent: Yeah. #00:28:39-0#
interviewer: So that’s the kind of methodology that you would use? #00:28:42-8#
respondent: I wanted to do that with families, but then I realised that I first need to attach two therapists and everything and then let it float. But, yeah. That was my initial idea actually. Yep. To make it worth it, okay, here it goes. But it’s not that easy. (pause) Yeah, I guess I have like in my mind, and in my process, I’m always thinking about certain type of collaboration. Or at least … Yeah. To give options. #00:29:11-4#
interviewer: Do you have any thoughts about what success looks like in this project? What you’re try… Will you measure… I guess you don’t really have hypothesis as such. But is it… Yeah, what would success look like with this? #00:29:31-4#
respondent: That’s an interesting question. (pause) I don’t know. #00:29:37-9#
interviewer: (pause) I mean it will change, because you’re so early on in the process. #00:29:49-6#
respondent: Yeah. #00:29:50-5#
interviewer: Yeah. I find that an interesting question to ask people. Particularly from art and design, because you don’t usually think about it. You’re like the process is what you’re really interested in. #00:30:06-7#
respondent: Yeah. #00:30:08-1#
interviewer: Whereas if you ask psychologists what success is, they know exactly. Like it’s data and black and white. So I find that quite fascinating. #00:30:20-6#
respondent: Yeah, because for example, now I was thinking like what’s success, and I was thinking about well the different like, I don’t know, recordings of amazing things that can happen in there. Of like… But you can’t know until you test it and until you find like, “Wow, I didn’t expect that.” #00:30:37-3#
interviewer: Yep. Yeah, I am probably exactly the same. It’s kind of the emergent behaviours that are the most interesting. #00:30:50-4#
respondent: Exactly. #00:30:51-4#
interviewer: The unexpected things. #00:30:52-0#
respondent: Because you never know what happens with behaviours. For example in mine, well my success would know if they’re relaxed or not, when they have like strange behaviours happening. And you’re like, “I don’t know what to do.” That would be my success. To go with my niece and she’s flapping pages like crazy, but I know she’s relaxed and now I can say, “Okay, what are my options? Do I stop it now and leave her for a bit?” That would be like mine, for mine. Because I don’t know. Because a lot of things can happen. But saying it’s about behaviour, it’s like fascinating. Behaviour is just fascinating. #00:31:27-7#
interviewer: Cool. Have you got any questions? #00:31:39-1#
respondent: No. Just thinking of possibilities. (laughing) Yeah. #00:31:44-1#
interviewer: (laughing) There’s a lot that I could probably do next, but there sort of comes a point where you got to go, “That’s the end. I can’t go any further.” #00:31:56-2#
respondent: Oh, it’s so hard. #00:31:56-3#
interviewer: It’s hard to let go. #00:32:00-4#
respondent: Yeah, I imagine. Well, yeah. #00:32:04-1#
interviewer: Cool. Alright, I might switch this off. (cough) #00:32:08-8#
—
Occupational therapist
respondent: Yeah, I can just leave it here? #00:00:14-0#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:00:14-2#
respondent: Sweet. #00:00:14-9#
interviewer: Okay, so I’ll bring you in here. (entering dome space) This is where I’ve kind of ended up in this practice I guess. This is not like a finished work. #00:00:33-4#
respondent: Yeah. #00:00:34-3#
interviewer: It’s always a prototype and um, the way I think about this is it might become a pilot study for something a little bit more rigorous. #00:00:42-4#
respondent: Okay. #00:00:43-1#
interviewer: Yeah, but what I usually do is ask people if they’d like to interact with it before I explain how it works because I’m really interested to see like, how people interpret it without any direction. #00:00:54-7#
respondent: Okay. #00:00:55-4#
interviewer: So, go for it. #00:00:57-0#
respondent: Cool. Oh, this is cool. (laughing) #00:01:02-2#
respondent: (long pause while interacting with interface) Oh my gosh, I can imagine, kids would love this. Why is it going off? (laughing) (long pause while interacting with interface) It’s like a little bit turn-taking is it? It can be? #00:01:49-2#
interviewer: Um, well. Actually, I’ll explain how it’s programmed. The… my goal, I guess, is for the interaction to kind of be a facilitator of social communication. The child comes in here with their parent, which always ended up being their mother. Um, and so, I did a couple of other iterations, this is the third. It was the most successful because I think when you first come in and you press any button it’s like there’s an instant connection there equals colour all over the tent. #00:02:23-3#
respondent: Mm-hmm (affirmative). #00:02:23-3#
interviewer: Um, but the way the system’s programmed is kind of divided up into these segments, so the tent has 5 segments, which have lights on them and if you remain within the same segment, it eventually becomes mapped to that position. #00:02:40-1#
respondent: Okay. #00:02:40-8#
interviewer: But if you keep staying in the same segment for long enough the mapping is totally removed. (pressing buttons repeatedly) And I’ve called that sabotage. I’ve taken that from, like it’s an OT term. #00:02:54-2#
respondent: Mm-hmm (affirmative). #00:02:54-6#
interviewer: The idea is that once I establish control for the child, so it’s very clear they are generally quite happy to play with that understanding, but if I take it away what I found was almost always that the child would like ask for help or try and find patterns. Like they’d be a lot more explicit with the way that they behaved. #00:03:21-5#
respondent: Mm-hmm (affirmative). #00:03:22-2#
interviewer: The best example I had was an autistic boy who came in and immediately realised this was a scale and he walked around and around, and pressed sequentially button, button, button. #00:03:35-2#
respondent: Yeah. #00:03:35-1#
interviewer: But I’ve got, I was like observing from outside and I’ve got the sabotage switch, and so I stopped it from working and as soon as I did he sat down and he was like “oh, mum can you try that button over there” or something like that. #00:03:50-0#
respondent: Oh, okay. #00:03:50-1#
interviewer: Even when I turned the sabotage back off, so it was mapped properly he didn’t go back to that repetitive behaviour. He was trying to figure like out relationships between buttons. Um, and that kind of relationship focus is what I see mostly with adults, and I think you were doing that a little bit as well, so people usually like, “well if I try all the red buttons together…”, but kids they seem more like, um, I don’t know what you’d call it, but it’s just the sort of joy of mashing buttons. #00:04:28-2#
respondent: Yeah, yeah. #00:04:28-8#
interviewer: Because they’re getting some response they’re quite happy in that state. #00:04:31-2#
respondent: Mm-hmm (affirmative). #00:04:31-7#
interviewer: And so I found that the sabotage thing just gave me a bit more interesting behaviours. #00:04:38-0#
respondent: Yeah, kind of challenges them a bit more on a higher level almost – cognitively. #00:04:42-9#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:04:43-2#
respondent: It’s so cool. (laughing) #00:04:45-7#
interviewer: Yeah, I think, so, I brought the kids in. I’ve got 3 cameras in here, I record them and observe them from outside. #00:05:03-7#
respondent: Mm-hmm (affirmative). #00:05:04-4#
interviewer: And it was non-directed, so I let the child and parent in and said they can stay for as long as they want and they can leave whenever they want, which tended to be sort of 10 or 15 minutes in here, most kids. Um and then I went outside with them and we watched the video back together and just used that as kind of a prompt to think, to talk about not just how they felt in this space, but perhaps what, um, like a broader context for why they would do certain things. So, some kids like sound or don’t like sound, and that just helped us to kind of talk about those things afterwards. Um, it wasn’t very structured, but… yeah, it kinda helped me understand the behaviour a little bit more. #00:05:54-6#
respondent: Were they verbal children? #00:05:58-4#
interviewer: I only had 2 autistic kids. I had a lot of trouble finding participants, because what I found very late in the game was people like Aspect are now hesitant to help me out because this is not evidence-based approach um, and so I think there’s some link to the way that funding is given to them based on evidence-based approaches. #00:06:23-2#
respondent: Surely it’s research though, that’s how you find an evidence base. It’s how you build an evidence base. #00:06:29-9#
interviewer: Yeah, yeah. I don’t think I ever had the resources to get that level of data and number of participants through here, I mean I’m doing this on my own. It’s a very different approach for this faculty. #00:06:43-5#
respondent: Yeah. #00:06:44-1#
interviewer: People were always interested, but they had no idea how to help me out. And I approached a few people over in Psychology at the main campus and it was the same sort of thing. They liked the idea, but because it wasn’t structured in a way that I guess gave them value if they gave their time they couldn’t really commit to it. #00:07:06-8#
respondent: Mm-hmm (affirmative). #00:07:06-4#
interviewer: So in the end, the 2 autistic kids I got were quite high-functioning, didn’t have access to services, and so they were just interested in being part of it. #00:07:19-4#
respondent: Yeah. #00:07:20-0#
interviewer: I had 4 neurotypical kids through as well, same age group. #00:07:25-7#
respondent: Yep. (pause) Seems a pity doesn’t it. I can’t believe Aspect wasn’t more, um… #00:07:39-2#
interviewer: …Yeah, when I did my Honours work it was in retrospect a breeze. #00:07:44-9#
respondent: Yeah. #00:07:45-3#
interviewer: It went through really easy, but I have a feeling that there’s been big changes there. And it seems as though their research is kind of, I guess the way that they get funding and they’re a little bit protective of how they let other people in to that, which I guess is fair enough. #00:08:05-2#
respondent: Yeah, there’s always an element of that, I guess, in research. #00:08:08-8#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:08:09-5#
respondent: Just seems like a lot of potential, especially from an OT perspective. #00:08:15-0#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:08:15-2#
respondent: This sort of thing, and that’s the problem there is such little evidence around you know, everything to do with sensory processing, but you’ve got to start somewhere. #00:08:25-1#
interviewer: What I’ve found, OTs, teachers, people kind of, on the front line, I guess, are really open to it and really wanting to help me out, but it’s, I guess the more like cognitive science, psychology, the hard science people are like “no this is not really what we do”. #00:08:47-2#
respondent: Yeah, getting through some bureaucracy. #00:08:50-8#
interviewer: Yeah, yeah. All right, I’ll show you how I got here. So this is going to be a bit different with you… I mean I’ve interviewed designers and kind of talked about my process, which I guess makes a lot of sense to them, but you probably have a very different approach to practical work, so that’s really interesting. This is the Honours work that I did, so I did 3 devices over a year for the girl with autism. The first one was kind of designed to sort of I guess, see what sensory preferences she had. So this was an auditory one. This had vibration in it and this had a visual, this lit up, depending on how close your hand was to the surface. #00:09:47-6#
respondent: Cool. So you build these, this is your work? #00:09:52-1#
interviewer: Yeah, yeah. #00:09:52-4#
respondent: Okay, yeah. #00:09:52-7#
interviewer: So that’s my background, I guess, kind of, um, digital sensory technology. #00:10:01-7#
respondent: Yeah. #00:10:02-4#
interviewer: She was definitely attracted to the vibration, so I made this device, which had these vibrating joysticks, but different materials on each to separate whether she was really interested in the vibration or perhaps just the materiality of the surface. #00:10:19-2#
respondent: Mm-hmm (affirmative), okay. #00:10:20-4#
interviewer: And it seemed that it was pretty clear that vibration was what she was into. When she first used it and realised that she was able to control it she immediately looked to her mother and the OT I was working with said that was really nice… #00:10:36-0#
respondent: …Joint attention. #00:10:37-5#
interviewer: Joint attention, yeah, which is, I guess, where the early ideas for this came about. (referring to dome space) #00:10:42-8#
respondent: Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah, yeah. #00:10:43-7#
interviewer: In the end, I created a change table for her, this was because her mum always had trouble changing her. She was very active. #00:10:53-7#
respondent: Mm-hmm (affirmative). #00:10:54-4#
interviewer: And we thought that vibration might settle her, but the trick with this was that it would only vibrate if you pressed each opposing corner at the same time, and it was too far apart for her to do on her own, so she had to ask her mum to help out. Wasn’t hugely successful, but I think it was an interesting process. #00:11:17-6#
respondent: Mmm. So did it settle her a little bit more or not really? #00:11:22-6#
interviewer: She was interested in it like a toy, I guess, rather than a calming… #00:11:27-0#
respondent: …Functional kind of… #00:11:28-7#
interviewer: … Yeah, yeah. (pause) So that was, I guess, what led me into the PhD and if I was talking about this with a designer I’d say this was my material studies, um, which became a small prototype and I thought through some ideas about how lighting can tell a story with sound as well and I made these headphones that have microphones on them, which give a really strange auditory sensation. So I was also thinking about how, if you had a different way of sensing the world, would that change the way that you interact. I guess they’re sort of speculative and an interesting way to think through some ideas. But I thought this is just way too complex for kids of that age group. #00:12:31-0#
respondent: Mm-hmm (affirmative). #00:12:31-9#
interviewer: So then I went into designing different interfaces. The tent thing was always what I was working with because I was hoping to work with Aspect and perhaps in their schools it’s designed to be mobile. #00:12:47-4#
respondent: Yeah. #00:12:47-6#
interviewer: Fit within certain heights of rooms, so that was kind of always the way the space was, but the surface of the interface has been through several developments. #00:13:01-5#
respondent: Yeah. #00:13:01-9#
interviewer: The first one was these blocks and there was a camera underneath, which basically could track the position of each, so this would trigger a purple light in that position, if you imagine looking down at the tent from the top. #00:13:16-6#
respondent: Mm-hmm (affirmative). #00:13:17-2#
interviewer: This would be a blue light or a yellow light, and so on. #00:13:19-9#
respondent: Yeah. #00:13:20-5#
interviewer: But, just way too abstract for kids I found, because there was no reference on the surface as to what you’re controlling. So I went into this peg and hole type game, which was more successful in the way that it mapped to that surface. So a red peg in that hole triggers a red light in that space. #00:13:42-9#
respondent: Yeah, okay. So and you, this was in the middle of what you’ve got there. #00:13:48-7#
interviewer: Yeah, so that’s removable, that top. #00:13:50-8#
respondent: Okay, yeah. That’s pretty cool. #00:13:54-3#
interviewer: But there was a few problems with this it was quite rushed and I found this rough surface was not great for especially autistic kids. #00:14:03-4#
respondent: Yeah. #00:14:03-6#
interviewer: And there was also an interesting thing, I have these lights underneath and the quality of that really bright LED a couple of the kids didn’t like it. There was one boy who couldn’t look directly at it, so he was still interacting, but he’d be like looking away. #00:14:21-0#
respondent: Yeah, okay. #00:14:21-9#
interviewer: And I didn’t think he was engaged at all until we did the little interview afterwards and he piped up, and he was like “yeah the yellow peg makes a yellow light”. #00:14:30-3#
respondent: Oh, so he knew, but it’s not like he was… #00:14:33-5#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:14:33-8#
respondent: …using his peripheral vision, maybe… #00:14:35-9#
interviewer: …I guess to filter out that light, yeah. #00:14:38-0#
respondent: …the intensity. #00:14:38-7#
interviewer: But this was definitely the most successful, I think, (referring to third interface) because of the instantaneous way that buttons trigger lights. #00:14:47-7#
respondent: Yeah. #00:14:48-0#
interviewer: Yeah, and then my, I get my data is really all from interviews. #00:14:54-3#
respondent: Okay. #00:14:55-5#
interviewer: So, one of these is from a teacher from an Aspect school, and another one is from a woman who has Asperger’s who’s been amazing the way that she can articulate some things is just really incredible. #00:15:13-6#
respondent: An adult with Asperger’s? #00:15:14-7#
interviewer: Yeah, yeah. I think she was diagnosed when she was about 40, which was really interesting. So like, she has totally learned to behave in a typical kind of way, but she can still speak about those experiences in an amazing way. #00:15:30-3#
respondent: What did she say about it? Which one is she… (pointing at interview transcripts) #00:15:31-8#
interviewer: …Ahh, this one. I’ve interviewed her a couple of times. #00:15:34-7#
respondent: Yeah. #00:15:35-0#
interviewer: This was the last interface and she was really attracted to the musicality of it. #00:15:41-8#
respondent: Yeah. #00:15:41-9#
interviewer: She apparently has perfect pitch and she tells me that that’s kind of common in autism. #00:15:46-5#
respondent: Yeah, yeah. I’ve definitely heard it a few times. #00:15:48-8#
interviewer: Yeah, so she was yeah, attracted immediately to playing music rather than the lights. #00:15:55-4#
respondent: Yeah. #00:15:55-8#
interviewer: She felt like the lights supported it, but it was all about the sound for her. #00:15:59-8#
respondent: Yeah, because our research is with adults with autism and um, we’ve got about 70 so far from around Australia, but most of them are diagnosed in the last 3 to 4 years, so probably similar to this woman. #00:16:19-2#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:16:19-8#
respondent: Yeah. So the next, what’s the next step? Obviously your PhD is this whole design process and interview and everything. What’s the next step with this? #00:16:35-5#
interviewer: Ahh, yeah, depends a lot on the kind of interest I get from this work. So, we’ve got a few people here who actually work with autism in different ways. #00:16:50-5#
respondent: Mm-hmm (affirmative). #00:16:51-0#
interviewer: There’s a Masters student who’s interested in how the design of eating utensils might change the way that a child is… Um, I get the impression that they sometimes find it difficult to eat certain foods. #00:17:10-6#
respondent: Yeah. #00:17:11-2#
interviewer: I don’t know whether it’s a texture or what’s going on, but, so she’s interested in the design of those to get around that problem. There’s another woman who is looking at the design of classrooms and how that effects learning outcomes. A Postdoc here is working with robots and the way that a robot can teach facial expressions. #00:17:34-4#
respondent: Mm-hmm (affirmative). #00:17:35-2#
interviewer: So there’s a few of us and we’re kind of looking at I guess whether there’s any interest in funding, and if there is I might stick around and do a postdoc, sort of continue on, but I’d really like to work with psychologists or someone that can add a bit of that rigour to the process. #00:17:57-5#
respondent: Yeah, you’ll definitely have to keep in contact with us because… Have you heard of the Autism CRC? #00:18:04-4#
interviewer: Only, I think, just by looking for you online. #00:18:08-3#
respondent: Yeah, yeah, so it’s like 8 years of funding national cooperative research centre. It’s $31 million over 8 years and there’s sites all over Australia. #00:18:19-9#
interviewer: Mm-hmm (affirmative). #00:18:20-4#
respondent: And we have one in Sydney and it’s at UNSW in Randwick, so it’s myself. I have a PhD student and we are working with adults, but there’s also another postdoc that’s working with children and she’s got 2 PhD students working with children as well. They’re doing kind of MRI, some brain imaging stuff. Yeah, so, I just, it’s all USNW so we can definitely help you out a little bit. I think it’s pretty exciting. It seems like, I guess there’s a few ways you could go about it, you could definitely go down the whole early intervention learning those skills and actually kind of running, I don’t know, some sort of therapy sessions in there compared to regular therapy sessions that children get and see what the differences are when you’re learning, you know, if the goal is to learn social communication or even joint attention, those really low-level skills. #00:19:24-0#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:19:24-4#
respondent: Or, you could, or it could definitely be used for like, modulation, so almost calming because that sort of space is really, it would be a little bit harder to put that into a research project. #00:19:42-6#
interviewer: I had a diversional therapist come in and she said that she could imagine using the space in a group therapy context… #00:19:53-0#
respondent: Yeah. #00:19:53-0#
interviewer: It’s not so much the interaction, but just as like a space that was calming. #00:19:57-3#
respondent: Mm-hmm (affirmative), mm-hmm (affirmative). And see how that affects the kids’ abilities to attend. #00:20:02-9#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:20:03-4#
respondent: Um, and then even, you know, older adults with more severe intellectual disabilities and you could just really, you know the cause and effect stuff, so those people who can’t communicate, well we can’t work out a way to communicate with them, you know, that’s the really severe end of the autism spectrum. #00:20:26-1#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:20:26-5#
respondent: And i’m thinking about some of the adults I’ve met who do have kind of moderate intellectual disability, just their ability to kind of attend to a task or um, kind of concentrate for a longer period, you know some environment like that could be really helpful. #00:20:46-5#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:20:46-9#
respondent: Just having that control over the environment. I don’t know there’s a lot, there’s a lot… #00:20:52-9#
interviewer: Yeah, I think there’s definitely a lot of potential to explore it. #00:20:56-8#
respondent: It’s just about getting some funding I guess. #00:20:59-3#
interviewer: That’s it, yeah. #00:21:00-4#
respondent: That’s always the go to. #00:21:02-9#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:21:03-2#
respondent: Have you, what about Giant Steps, that school, have you been in contact with them at all? #00:21:09-3#
interviewer: I have heard of them. I can’t remember if I got in touch with them. #00:21:13-0#
respondent: Yeah. #00:21:13-9#
interviewer: When I start I got in touch with a lot of people. Didn’t get a lot of feedback. #00:21:17-4#
respondent: No, it’s hard, it’s so hard. #00:21:19-7#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:21:19-8#
respondent: I’m doing the same things in the adult space, just calling all these people trying to find participants for our study. It’s yeah, it’s definitely an ongoing kind of task. #00:21:31-6#
interviewer: Yeah. Um, all right, (laughing) this is going to be interesting, the tape on the floor is to kind of step through the stages of my process, so it’s like I guess early concept, material studies, prototyping, iterative design, and my data. #00:21:53-7#
respondent: Yeah. #00:21:53-8#
interviewer: And that’s kind of a back and forth process. Um, and what I had done is got a piece of chalk, which I think I left in the other room and draw on the floor the other person’s process and whether um, there’s any areas which overlap in any way. That’s like another way that I map out some data really. So, yours is, as I imagine, very different from mine. #00:22:21-8#
respondent: Yeah. #00:22:22-2#
interviewer: Can you see any points that sort of match up? #00:22:26-5#
respondent: So, um… I don’t really understand. What do you mean? #00:22:30-5#
interviewer: So, if… where do your original ideas come from? I mean, you have a hypothesis, I imagine. #00:22:41-2#
respondent: Mm-hmm (affirmative). #00:22:42-3#
interviewer: Which is quite different to me. I don’t really start with a hypothesis so much. That comes through the studies. #00:22:51-3#
respondent: Mm-hmm (affirmative). #00:22:51-8#
interviewer: And I sort of see what emerges out of that, but you would come to a study with quite a specific question in mind. #00:22:59-7#
respondent: Mm-hmm (affirmative). #00:23:00-4#
interviewer: And you’d test that iteratively I guess. Would you make changes in a study? #00:23:07-5#
respondent: Definitely, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, often it would be based on the literature, and even to some extent you know, something like this qualitative data. #00:23:20-4#
interviewer: Mm-hmm (affirmative). #00:23:20-7#
respondent: And then, yeah, you kind of design your research question, your hypotheses, but that can change, especially I mean, in more qualitative kind of space it can change. You definitely can adjust the… Yeah, it depends what you’re doing. It depends what the research is, I guess. #00:23:41-9#
interviewer: Is there any examples of projects that you have where there’s very… quite a material artefact that’s involved? #00:23:53-3#
respondent: Like an intervention kind of thing? #00:23:59-4#
interviewer: Yeah, yeah. #00:23:59-9#
respondent: Um, not really in the work I’ve been involved in. #00:24:03-2#
interviewer: Okay. #00:24:03-4#
respondent: Um, we have, all our research, especially at the moment, is questionnaire based. #00:24:10-7#
interviewer: Mm-hmm (affirmative). #00:24:11-1#
respondent: I mean, we do alter the questionnaire to a certain extent and we’ve been working with adults with autism to make it appropriate for them, make sure there’s no ambiguous language and all that sort of thing. And it’s all online as well, and that’s a bit of a nightmare sometimes, so we definitely have had to adjust that as issues arise. #00:24:33-6#
interviewer: And once you get the feedback from that questionnaire, where do you go from there? Do you refocus it based on the kind of data you get from that? #00:24:49-2#
respondent: Yeah, so it’s pretty much the whole aim of the study is to kind of develop an understanding, or a profile, of physical and mental health, productivity, well being. We have a big sensory processing measure in there, so we are going to, once we get all the data in we’ve got a control comparison group of neurotypical adults. Once we get it, pretty much we write it all, we analyse it, write it all up, see where the differences are, see where the similarities are, see where the gaps are in services, see what the differences are in mental and physical health, and what that then means for services and policies, and funding bodies. And then from there we kind of do a little bit of advocacy and work with government bodies to try and get that message across about what’s happening and why it’s important and why there needs to be funding in certain areas to try different things. #00:25:53-1#
interviewer: Yup. #00:25:53-6#
respondent: So that’s pretty much where our research goes to. It’s just, it’s at a really low level developing and understanding of what’s happening, especially with adults because there’s so little done and so little done, there’s so little understanding. #00:26:08-0#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:26:08-2#
respondent: Yeah, I think… #00:26:12-4#
interviewer: Why do you think that is? Obviously, it seems like to be a focus on early intervention in kids. #00:26:18-0#
respondent: Well the diagnosis was only identified in the ’40s and then only became kind of mainstream, more well known, in the ’60s. #00:26:26-4#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:26:27-1#
respondent: So that means even if those people were diagnosed, were kinda born in the ’60s may have got a diagnosis. It wasn’t really that well known, it wasn’t really that mainstream. Um, those people are only going to be 50 something now. So the, you know, focus has been on children because the majority of people with autism have been children up until now. And as the awareness kinda grows there’s lots of adults getting diagnoses in adulthood. So the number is just you know, increasing. I’ve had a lot of conversation with adults who go, oh my gosh, like, you know, I’ve had all these struggles my whole life and then I learned about autism, I went to a psychiatrist, I got a diagnosis and it’s like everything makes sense. #00:27:20-0#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:27:21-5#
respondent: I look back my whole life, my whole schooling, everything can be attributed to some parts of my autism. #00:27:28-4#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:27:29-5#
respondent: Yeah, so I think that’s kind of why. There’s just a huge, in the last 5 years, or even less than that, there’s been more of a push to start understand adulthood. #00:27:44-4#
interviewer: Mm-hmm (affirmative). #00:27:44-9#
respondent: And there’s a really interesting movement. Some adults have a really strong self-advocacy movement, and some adults hold the kind of identity of autism as a core part of their person. #00:27:59-4#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:27:59-6#
respondent: And then you get into all these issues with language. #00:28:03-2#
interviewer: We had a really interesting debate, actually, with a group of people. One of them is this woman with Asperger’s, she’s a self-advocate. #00:28:10-2#
respondent: Yeah. #00:28:10-6#
interviewer: So it was like identity-first versus person-first. #00:28:13-0#
respondent: Yes. #00:28:13-3#
interviewer: And another person in the group is from special education at main campus and she was very person-first. #00:28:20-4#
respondent: Yes. #00:28:20-8#
interviewer: It was really interesting. #00:28:22-9#
respondent: Yeah, it’s a really big and ongoing debate at the moment. And adult, most adults on the spectrum, that I know, prefer identity first and, therefore, their argument is most of us prefer identity first, so it should be identity first because we’re the one experiencing it. And I do agree with that, but I also think as well some adults who have severe co-morbid intellectual disability don’t necessarily have a voice and um, may not want their disability to be a part of their identity because it’s so severe. But yeah, it’s hard to balance it. #00:29:01-2#
interviewer: Yeah, I’ve actually started using identity-first language in my writing. #00:29:05-2#
respondent: You have? Yeah. #00:29:06-2#
interviewer: I guess it’s easier for me having a design background, I’ve got the freedom to make that decision perhaps more than someone from a science background. #00:29:14-8#
respondent: Yeah. #00:29:15-3#
interviewer: But um, I mean just from speaking to this woman, she doesn’t think about… She’s very much neurodiversity-centric, I guess. #00:29:26-8#
respondent: Yeah. #00:29:27-7#
interviewer: And that’s, I feel like I’m not in a position to speak for them. #00:29:32-9#
respondent: No. #00:29:33-4#
interviewer: If that’s what she wants, then that’s what I’m going to do. #00:29:36-0#
respondent: I definitely think that’s a good thing. You know. I do lean towards identity-first. I swap back and forth depending on who I’m talking to. I’ve had some conversations with you know, parents of adults who have autism, really severe intellectual disability. They’ve cared for them for 55 years. You know, they’re 75 themselves and um, they don’t want to hear about their autistic son or daughter because you know, that’s their daughter that is a person first and foremost. #00:30:12-2#
interviewer: Yeah, yeah, yeah. #00:30:12-0#
respondent: Because I mean, in those cases, I guess the intellectual disability and the autism is really affecting their life in a negative way. So, yeah, but, I swap between. And I think most of the feedback I’ve heard as well is if you at least acknowledge that you are aware of the debate and you know, you try and be respectful for everyone and use the appropriate language in appropriate context, but still it’s hard. (laughing) Yeah. And did the, I wonder, did she have any ideas about how to go forward, like how she would’ve like to see this move forward? #00:31:04-0#
interviewer: Um… She’s actually a PhD here. #00:31:08-5#
respondent: Okay. #00:31:09-1#
interviewer: And her work is about trying to create spaces that, um, how does she frame it, it’s not about a common language, but create spaces that help neurotypical people appreciate what, like how a person with autism might negotiate mostly sensory kinda stuff. #00:31:37-5#
respondent: Yeah. #00:31:36-8#
interviewer: So, she will create a room that’s quite, full of lots of almost found objects. It’s pretty interesting. And it’s quite hard to describe actually. So she might have streamers, I guess it’s a little bit sensory room-esque, but it’s not technology focused. #00:32:01-6#
respondent: Yeah, okay. #00:32:02-7#
interviewer: So she is really interested in this space as a contained and calming environment, more so than the interaction. #00:32:13-3#
respondent: Yeah. #00:32:17-8#
interviewer: And that’s I think that’s probably been the most successful part of this whole thing is just that as an environment there’s something about it that’s quite welcoming and calming, and I think I’ve managed to find a nice spot between safe and contained, but not claustrophobic. #00:32:36-7#
respondent: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, it’s cause it’s definitely, it’s kind of like I don’t know airy, but still yeah, like you say safe. I’ve seen a lot of behaviours of kids try and just escape everything. you know, they crawl under tables or try and pull things down on top of them, but going in there would… #00:33:01-1#
interviewer: I mean, I didn’t have any low-functioning kids in there, so I guess it’s hard to make a call on that. #00:33:07-8#
respondent: Yeah. #00:33:09-6#
interviewer: But, even the water rain, bird sounds, I think helped to make it feel like it was its own space and wasn’t just in like a concrete box, especially when the kids came in the first time, I guess, there was a chance that it would’ve been quite alienating and strange, but I didn’t have that problem at all. So it was good. #00:33:34-5#
respondent: Can you move it quite easily or not? #00:33:38-5#
interviewer: Yeah, it packs up pretty much like a camping tent. #00:33:42-6#
respondent: Okay. #00:33:43-1#
interviewer: Um, the complex part is the way that I’ve set up the lighting. #00:33:48-2#
respondent: Yeah, okay. #00:33:49-3#
interviewer: If I was to develop this further I had in mind to make the pieces kind of modular and the lighting and sound would sort of fit within those modules. #00:34:01-1#
respondent: Okay, yeah. #00:34:01-7#
interviewer: It’s a safety issue with all the cabling and stuff around, like if a kid jumps through and runs around. #00:34:07-3#
respondent: Which is likely. #00:34:09-7#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:34:10-1#
respondent: If you start getting to… Yeah. #00:34:14-2#
interviewer: Um, so that’s probably where I’d go with it if I revisited it. With my background in DIY and maker technology I’m really big on it like being accessible in a cost sense as well. #00:34:36-8#
respondent: Yeah. #00:34:37-0#
interviewer: Um, so everything should be available off the shelf and people can kind of set it up in their homes if they would like. #00:34:45-2#
respondent: Yeah, see because is like a play on like a… there is some literature on you know, sensory rooms. I worked in a respite facility, in WA, for kids with disabilities, all sorts of disabilities, and we had this one room set up and it was just a sensory room. We’d spend an hour in there with the kids after lunch and it would be like, you know, really dark and some bits over there would have cool lighting like this, down there is like a… There used to be this mat on the ground, which was like a vibrating mat, and kids would just lie on it and vibrate. Over there there’s like a wall that they can press and different things light up. And I know there’s some research about that and the influences that that can have on some children. It could be you know, somewhat evidence based. #00:35:51-0#
interviewer: Yeah. What I read about it was very, um… what’s the word I’m looking for… Some people were very anti that approach. There’s some people at Macquarie Uni who were like “no, there’s no evidence for it- #00:36:18-2#
respondent: Yeah. #00:36:19-1#
interviewer: -it’s all hearsay and anecdotal.” And then there’s whole papers written about how it was successful in you know, improving learning outcomes. #00:36:30-6#
respondent: Mmm. It’s just still at that kind of base level. #00:36:34-4#
interviewer: I’m just going to… (talking to someone outside the space) I’m just doing an interview. Can you give me 5 minutes? #00:36:40-7#
outside: Sure. #00:36:40-9#
interviewer: Thanks. #00:36:41-6#
respondent: Um, yeah, it’s interesting, but in the new DSM V criteria for autism they’ve got, they’ve actually listed sensory processing abnormalities, which changes things. At least it’s slowly getting acknowledged as a, by the high science people as a difference, even though it’s so hard to test. #00:37:05-3#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:37:05-3#
respondent: So I think that the ways to treat it, and you know, the fact that all the people in the front line and the people with autism themselves you know, talk about the usefulness of this sort of thing. #00:37:18-8#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:37:18-9#
respondent: But there definitely are some people in the other school of thought, as in most things. #00:37:27-6#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:37:29-4#
respondent: Yeah. I think it’s amazing. I want to sit in there all day. (laughing) #00:37:34-1#
interviewer: (laughing) Yeah, I turned up to Uni one day I had to do some studies, and I had a terrible migraine, and ended up just like curling up in the tent for a couple of hours and then I was all better. It was great. #00:37:46-0#
respondent: (laughing) There you go. Treats migraines. Oh, that’s perfect. Yeah. So, you’re opening it up… Are you sending it around to autism organisations to say they can come in? #00:38:03-7#
interviewer: No, I didn’t do that so much, I just opened it up like a standard exhibition here. #00:38:08-3#
respondent: Oh, okay, okay, so it’s more over the design elements of it than the… #00:38:12-3#
interviewer: Yeah, yeah. #00:38:12-4#
respondent: User kind of elements. #00:38:15-1#
interviewer: Yeah, all the other interviews I’ve done have been with design practitioners, so we talk a lot about that sort of process, but it’s great to get your perspective on it as well. #00:38:27-2#
respondent: Yeah, I think it’s awesome. I mean, like I said, I’ve got some other people. Are you still looking for people to come in? #00:38:33-1#
interviewer: Yeah, if anyone’s available. I’m only going to be set up until probably Tuesday or Wednesday next week. #00:38:38-7#
respondent: Okay. Yeah, I’ll check with the girls. Um, yeah, as I said, there’s 3 PhDs and one other postdoc, and if it’s just a free shuttle to get here I’m sure they’d be happy to come. #00:38:51-2#
interviewer: Yeah, that’d be great. #00:38:52-1#
respondent: Just out of interest more out of anything. #00:38:54-7#
interviewer: Yeah, yeah. Um, and we’ve got the Autism Research Group, we call it. They might be interested in what you’re doing as well. #00:39:06-7#
respondent: Yeah, awesome. #00:39:08-7#
interviewer: I don’t know if you want to meet up some time. #00:39:10-2#
respondent: Definitely. #00:39:11-0#
interviewer: We can bring everyone over. #00:39:11-7#
respondent: Mmm, that would be a really good idea. #00:39:13-7#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:39:14-2#
respondent: Yeah, we’re definitely keen. We’re starting to try and find all the autism people in UNSW, or even in Sydney, because all the other states have kind of these big hubs of research centres. #00:39:30-0#
interviewer: Okay. #00:39:30-8#
respondent: In Melbourne there’s OTARC, which is the Olgar Tennison Autism Research Centre, in WA there’s one at Curtin, like there’s all these big hubs in all the other states, but in Sydney there just doesn’t seem to be. #00:39:44-9#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:39:45-4#
respondent: I think because it’s so big, as well, Sydney. Everyone is spread out quite a lot, but um we’ve connected with some people in Psychology who are doing autism research recently, but we definitely would be interested in connecting with you guys and seeing what’s happening. #00:39:59-5#
interviewer: Yeah, that’d be great. #00:40:00-5#
respondent: And most of the other people are based here on this campus? #00:40:05-2#
interviewer: Except for the professor from special education, yeah, everyone is here. They’ve all got different practices. One’s got interior design, another actually comes from ABA Psychology, but she’s kinda heading towards design in her Masters now. #00:40:23-6#
respondent: Yeah. #00:40:24-3#
interviewer: Yeah, an artist, roboticist. #00:40:30-0#
respondent: A what, sorry? #00:40:31-4#
interviewer: Ahh, roboticist. #00:40:32-6#
respondent: That’s amazing. Yeah, that’s so cool. #00:40:37-0#
interviewer: Yeah, his work’s really interesting actually. #00:40:38-3#
respondent: Mm-hmm (affirmative).Cause there is like, and through the Autism CRC there are pockets of funding that come up. #00:40:45-9#
interviewer: Mm-hmm (affirmative). #00:40:46-4#
respondent: Like this year there was a small, $50,000 grant come up and people could just apply to it, as long as they were linked in with someone in the Autism CRC. You know, you put the application in together, or whatever, yeah, so those kind of came up last year. But I’m not sure when the next load will come up or anything like that. And how, cause I’m in the, there’s 3 programs in the Autism CRC. Program 1 is like children, even pre-natal genetics, that sort of stuff. #00:41:22-5#
interviewer: Okay. #00:41:23-0#
respondent: Program 2 is all school aged, and program 3 is adults. #00:41:28-2#
interviewer: Yeah. #00:41:28-7#
respondent: So I’m stuck in program 3, but the other postdoc and PhDs are program 1, so that would be more applicable. I’m just thinking about the funding opportunities through there. #00:41:41-7#
interviewer: Yeah. That’s really interesting. So we’ll definitely keep in touch. #00:41:48-6#
respondent: Yeah, this is exciting stuff as well. It’s much more exciting than just… You know, you get a bit sick of your own research sometimes. (laughing) #00:41:57-1#
interviewer: Yeah. Well, I laid this out for opening on Tuesday night and people who hadn’t seen it before were really excited. I’ve just, I’ve been surrounded by it for so long. #00:42:07-8#
respondent: Yeah, okay, so you’re like… #00:42:09-6#
interviewer: So I’m like, yeah. It’s cool, but… It was cool 2 years ago. (laughing) #00:42:12-7#
respondent: (laughing) Yeah. No, it’s awesome. #00:42:16-0#
interviewer: Thanks. #00:42:17-3#
respondent: Yeah. #00:42:18-2#
interviewer: Alright. I might switch off this now because I’ve got to transcribe everything. #00:42:20-9#
respondent: Yeah, don’t talk for too- #00:42:23-3#