In a number of domains, humans adopt a strategy of systematically reducing and minimizing a codified system of movement. One particularly interesting case is "marking" in dance, wherein the dancer performs an attenuated version of the choreography during rehearsal. This is ostensibly to save the dancer's physical energy, but a number of considerations suggest that it may serve a cognitive function as well. In this study, we tested this embodied-cognitive-load hypothesis by manipulating whether dancers rehearsed by marking or by dancing "full out" and found that performance was superior in the dancers who had marked. This finding indicates that marking confers cognitive benefits during the rehearsal process, and it raises questions regarding the cognitive functions of other movement-reduction systems, such as whispering, gesturing, and subvocalizing. In addition, it has implications for a variety of topics in cognitive science, including embodied cognition and the nascent fields of dance and music cognition.

In this paper, we investigate the value and challenges of observing movement experience in embodied design. We interviewed three design researchers selected from a CHI2014 panel on designing for the experiential body. For each designer, we analyzed a publication describing their process of observing movement experience. By analyzing the interviews and publications, we studied how these researchers observe movement and how they articulate it in their design process. From our study, we contribute a set of techniques for performing movement observation inspired by somatics and bodybased practices which we define as: attunement, attention, and kinesthetic empathy. We illustrate how these techniques have been applied by the selected researchers, and also highlight the remaining challenges related to articulating, translating, and sharing the felt movement experience in the context of design within HCI. Finally, we address these challenges by arguing for further exploration of movement frameworks from the fields of somatics, body-based practices, and movement studies as specific strategies that can be applied to HCI.

Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) is an expert-based method by which Certified Movement Analysts observe and analyze movement. LMA is increasingly used in a variety of research fields, particularly when studying movement expressivity and computation where it is essential to generate an understanding of the observation process. In this paper we articulate the application of LMA as a tool for movement analysis in HCI research by using qualitative methods to deconstruct the observation process of LMA experts. We conducted a focus group in which 12 expert-participants observed and annotated videos of movement according to LMA categories. We transcribed their observation process and analyzed it using grounded theory in order to extract categories, concepts and theories that best explain and describe the process of observation in LMA. By doing so, we open research perspectives in which LMA can be integrated as a method for observation in the design of movement-based computational systems.

No abstract