A social wearable that affords vulnerability

Abstract

We present 'True Colors': a social wearable prototype designed to augment co-located social interaction of players in a LARP (live action role play). We designed it to enable the emergence of rich social dynamics between wearers and non-wearers. True Colors is Y-shaped, worn around the upper body, and has front and back interfaces to distinguish between actions taken by the wearer (front), and actions taken by others (back). To design True Colors, we followed a Research-through-Design approach, used experiential qualities and social affordances to guide our process, and codesigned with LARP designers. 13 True Colors wearables were deployed in a 3-day LARP event, attended by 109 people. From all the functionalities and interactivity the device afforded, players gravitated towards ones that emphasized the social value of experiencing vulnerability as a prompt to get together. This project was recently presented in CHI '19 [1] and may offer useful insights to others in the Ubi-Comp/ISWC community who develop technology to support co-located social experience. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → HCI theory, concepts and models.

Technology for Situated and Emergent Play: A Bridging Concept and Design Agenda

“…Keep-Up-With-Me [60]; and to initiate meaningful social connections, e.g. True Colors [15]. We also presented 5 inspiring design features in the form of recommendations that can guide the design of future Technology for Situated and Emergent Play: i) transcending traditional game elements; ii) using playful objects to resignify serious situations; iii) affording flexibility of interaction; iv) using ambiguity to elicit curiosity; and v) creating unexpected disruptions that help people to let go.…”

“…In this case, the playful disruption has additional effects: it brings people together and encourages them to initiate contact. That is also true for True Colors [15], which periodically puts the wearer into a diegetic state of vulnerability that opens a window of opportunity for social and playful engagement between people: non-wearers can offer their help as a starting point of social interaction. Mood Squeezer [24] also uses oddity to bring people together: it attracts people through a series of out-of-context spheres that can be squeezed-an interaction that can be seen as pleasurable.…”

“…Play does not only bring people together: it also creates the right conditions to initiate meaningful connections. True Colors 6 [15] (Figure 9) is a social wearable used in the diegetic universe of a live action role play game (LARP). The wearable gives special abilities (including stunning others), but it periodically puts the wear into a diegetic state of vulnerability (health crisis) that can be alleviated by copresent others through social touch on the back (reducing the time of crisis).…”

Adorned in Memes: Exploring the Adoption of Social Wearables in Nordic Student Culture

“…Existing works have used approaches centred around a design artefact [8,9,14,15,25,35], data [7,9,32], or the users' proximity [7,32]. Only few studies [11,45] have investigated the social settings, practices and rules in place. This deficit corresponds with Olsson and co-authors' observations for all collocated social interactions technology [50].…”

Storycoding - Programming Physical Artefacts for Research Through Design

“…[57]). Timed elements, inputs and outputs requiring a continuous timed characteristic have been described or explored in [4,6,11,23]. Time has also been used as a kind of contextual variable [35,71].…”