The significant, original contribution of this paper is to show how an innovative method of questioning called `Clean Language' can enhance the authenticity and rigour of interview-based qualitative research. The paper explores the specific potential of Clean Language as a method for eliciting naturally occurring metaphors in order to provide in-depth understanding of a person's symbolic world, and also demonstrates how it can improve qualitative research more widely by addressing the propensity for researchers inadvertently to introduce extraneous metaphors into an interviewee's account at both data collection and interpretation stages. Despite substantial interest in metaphors in the field of organisational and management research there is a lack of explicit, systematic methods for eliciting naturally occurring metaphors. The issue of quality in qualitative methods has also been the subject of continuing debate. In order to explore its potential, Clean Language was used as a method of interviewing in a collaborative academic-practitioner project to elicit the metaphors of six midcareer managers, relating to the way they experienced work-life balance.

We explore the idea of making aesthetic decorative patterns that contain multiple visual codes. We chart an iterative collaboration with ceramic designers and a restaurant to refine a recognition technology to work reliably on ceramics, produce a pattern book of designs, and prototype sets of tableware and a mobile app to enhance a dining experience. We document how the designers learned to work with and creatively exploit the technology, enriching their patterns with embellishments and backgrounds and developing strategies for embedding codes into complex designs. We discuss the potential and challenges of interacting with such patterns. We argue for a transition from designing 'codes to patterns' that reflects the skills of designers alongside the development of new technologies.

No abstract

This paper examines how "biodata" -physiological information captured from the human body -might enhance television shows by giving viewers access to actors" physiological data. We broach this challenge through a prototype-show called The Experiment Live, in which four "paranormal investigators" were outfitted with sensors as they explored a "haunted" basement. This experience has enabled us to probe the challenges of using biodata as part of broadcasting and formulate an agenda for future research that includes: exploring whether/how biodata can be acted and/or simulated; and developing techniques that treat biodata visualisations in similar ways to existing camera-based production processes.

The Creativity Bento Box is a physical resource pack, designed to support casual social interaction and break taking in an intensive, computer--mediated social activity. It was developed within the Creativity Greenhouse project, which piloted a mechanism to create research proposals and distribute funding at a distance. This involved facilitated phases of collaboration and competition over multiple days of computer--mediated work, where participants communicate and interact through a virtual world. During the iterative development process, the lack of time for socialising, the intense focus on virtual resources, and a lack of time spent away from the screen were reported as negative issues in feedback from participants. We report on the development of the Creativity Bento Box and how it helped to address these issues. By providing physical resources that contrasted with the properties of the virtual world, it supported people to socialise and take breaks from their primary activity, allowed them to include physical space and artefacts in their interactions, and provoked moves away from the otherwise intense focus on the computer. We reflect on the roles of the Bento Box as a gift, in bridging between physical and virtual contexts, its higher suitability during the earlier phases of ideation and group development, and its perception by participants as something 'framed'. Through this, we highlight the underexplored potential of using physical, offline resources as a means to solve difficulties in distanced social interactions.