w5-6 - the dégustation

DESN800 // 31/03/26

Link to Week 6 Presentation Slides / Reflective Document

DESN800_W6Presentation_SophiaSchulz.pptx

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Note: My research question at the time of creating these slides was "How can tangible interactive technologies be used to transform residual urban space to increase lingering in such space?" After feedback from another instructor, I adjusted this to be "How can tangible interactive technologies be used to transform residual urban space to support lingering as a form of engagement with such space?" but this adjustment occurred after the presentation on March 31st. In my Week 4 blog, I changed my updated research question to reflect this updated wording, but kept the original wording in the slides to avoid confusion with what I originally presented. My presentation notes below (the verbal component of my presentation) have also been changed to reflect this updated wording. The reason for this change in wording was to place more emphasis on engagement with space as the "why" of my question, and reframe lingering as a means to achieve this end.

Also note that the photo of my Week 3 output in the slides was meant to be replaced by a video, but the video was too large to embed in the slides (nor did I have enough time in the presentation to show it). The link to this video can be found at the end of my Week 3 blog.

Verbal Presentation Notes

Research Question and Aims

My current research question is: how can tangible interactive technologies transform residual urban space to support lingering as a form of engagement with such space?

I will break this question into its three main keywords and discuss the contexts and ingredients relevant to each, alongside examples of my creative practice outputs and associated rationing constraints.

For context, my aim is to choose a site to design an interactive installation for, either within that site or as a representative gallery installation.

Tangible Interaction

For the first keyword, tangible interactive technologies, I had a hunch early on that tangible interaction could be more accessible and thought-provoking by differing from standard 2D touch surfaces and manifesting in familiar forms and materials rather than technologies like VR. This idea draws from the work of Eva Hornecker, Paul Dourish, and Hiroshi Ishii in tangible and embodied interaction.

From this, I chose the ingredients solid, processed, and viscous, evident in the following design explorations.

I experimented with translating something intangible — sound recordings — into tangible forms through visuals and materiality, incorporating the ingredients “solid” and “processed”. Two methods I trialled were laser cutting and weaving, the latter being new to me. I also experimented with physical touch interfaces using conductive materials to interface with the digital realm, processing interaction with solid forms into digital data. I integrated these with weaving and woodworking, incorporating "viscous" through the fluid forms I band-sawed from wood.

These explorations led to a hard and soft material plain weave in week 2, using copper strips as potential digital touch surfaces embedded in scrap fabric to further explore the tangibility and familiarity of the interaction.

From the size and scale constraints applied in the first two weeks, I learned that such limits help eliminate “analysis paralysis” and encourage more focused exploratory making rather than worrying about the final outcome.

Residual Urban Space

The second keyword in my question deals with residual urban spaces, drawing from the works of William Whyte and texts like Loose Space. A key precedent is Waimahara, an installation in a former residual urban space in Auckland that now creates a place of cultural and environmental narrative and promotes public lingering.

I chose the descriptive terms amalgamate and reconstitute: amalgamate meaning to bring together people and the physical and digital realms, and reconstitute meaning to revitalise residual urban spaces.

In week 2, I trialled photo walks as a brainstorming method. Taking and annotating photos while walking through environments like the CBD helped me notice urban structures, forms, and architecture and their influence on passersby.

I then applied these observations in spatial design models, trialling methods such as CNC routing and projection mapping. Through these artefacts I began exploring lingering in urban space by adding seating areas and tangible interaction through moveable sculptures and ambient projection-mapped visuals.

Lingering

The final keyword in my research question is lingering, drawing on concepts of phenomenology, sense of place, and atmospheric architecture, as well as studies analysing the current decrease in lingering in public spaces. These also connect back to tangible and embodied interaction, tying together focused and peripheral perception as applied in a spatial design context.

I chose the contexts narrative and environment: environment due to its relation to urban spatial design, and narrative because storytelling is central to my practice through how humans often communicate through stories and will likely be part of my final thesis work.

Given my work will be situated locally and involve tangible interaction, I chose the distribution channels local and physical.

The last two weeks had no size constraints, so I focused on larger pieces exploring tangible and embodied interaction at full scale. In week 3, I combined weaving and projection mapping with a central object encouraging arm movement alongside touch, bringing multiple people together to trigger interactions and promoting lingering near the work. I also situated the work in the CBD by adding laser-cut contours and building footprints and projection-mapping an ecological map that influenced the placement of touch points.

In week 4, I shifted toward larger-scale spatial design experiments, limiting myself to cardboard to focus on breadth rather than a single detailed artefact. One example is this atmospheric architecture panel, incorporating tangible interaction and affordance theory through a book trigger and exploring focused and peripheral perception with multidimensional projection mapping beyond a standard 2D interface, once again with the goal of encouraging lingering in a site.

[References for the above script can be found in the attached slides]

Presentation Feedback

My peers and instructors responded positively to my outputs and expressed curiosity about components of my work, such as my intention to choose a site to design around: similar to last week, my peers were interested in knowing what sites I would like to choose and suggested picking one that was significant to me. This feedback, coupled with feedback from previous weeks, has caused me to think deeper about what aspects of sites might attract me to pick them, considering aspects such as their current use by the public, their history or past lives, the materials located at that site (both past and present), or their environmental features (both past and present). I plan to explore potential sites in Design Practice 2 with the goal of picking a site significant to me through analysing it within these different lenses: environmental, cultural, material, social and historical. A particular aspect I am interested in considering is how space serves (or fails to serve) the community it's surrounded by, and believe that this will be important for me to address in my design approach as part of conducting place-based research and design.

Instructor feedback I received during the presentation touched on the idea of the "circuitry" of urban spaces, represented by connecting points and modes of roads, bus and train stations, walking and biking paths, etc. They suggested examining these connecting points to and around particular places and considering the potential juxtaposition of "high energy" vs. "low energy" spaces. This insight reminded me of my discussions with peers around what qualifies as "under-utilised space": perhaps "low energy" spaces might be less connected in a city (through lack of pathways, roads, transport, etc.) or could be "low energy" through poor use by the public despite its well-connected location. This discussion is also analogous to the circuitry of my work given I use digital and electrical technologies, and also sparked discussion around the "circuitry" of materials (such as folding and sewing textiles together) and whether I could explore literal and representative connections through the materials I use in my work. I find it sometimes difficult to balance the technical, research and design aspects of my topic and making, so this feedback provides helpful insight into how I could connect these different aspects through a common thread such as "circuitry".

Final Course Reflection

Including relevant notes from Contextual Review research

Much of the changes made to my research question occurred in the final two weeks of this course through reading about relevant sources and discussing with peers and instructors, helping to narrow my focus and back up my hunches with relevant previous work. Although adjusting my research direction, such as narrowing my scope to focus on tangible interaction and lingering, occurred after my making for this course had concluded, my reasons for choosing these focuses are very much backed by the making that I had produced in the first 4-5 weeks of the course. Additionally, reading contextual sources over the final two weeks gave me valuable insight into why some of my designs were effective in achieving the goals I had set out in my initial intentions each week.

My research question began as: How can the creative use of interactive technology enable the transformation of under-utilised public spaces to encourage emotional engagement in urban environments? Over the course of Design Practice I, I experimented with tangibility and materiality in interaction via conductive interfaces (w1, w2), translating intangible concepts such as sound into tangible ones through visuals, forms and textures (w1), created spatial design models incorporating natural features in urban environments with seating areas to encourage lingering in space (w2), learned projection mapping to amplify the atmosphere of spaces and objects and add another avenue for interaction (w2, w3), and combined all these learnings into physical-digital systems that explored tangible and embodied interaction at scale (w3, w4). Through these experiments and artefacts, I discovered recurring themes of tangible interaction, revitalising residual urban space, and lingering as a form of engaging with space, reforming my research question into the following: How can tangible interactive technologies transform residual urban space to support lingering as a form of engagement with such space?

Reflection on tangible interaction: My choice to focus on tangible interaction was informed by my own gravitation towards exploring tangibility in interaction through materials and forms in the early weeks of making, as well as research indicating that tangible interaction may be beneficial in increasing engagement with interactive installations by aiding in immersion, adding to the narrative of the work, and presenting in more familiar forms, materials and technologies compared to traditional 2D touchscreens, Virtual Reality or Augmented Reality (for more information, see my 1st and 4th draft annotations for Contextual Review). Reflecting on peer feedback and interactions with my work, I've found the tangibility of my work to be quite successful in connecting with audiences, particularly because many of my peers aren't as familiar with the technologies I am using, so they connect much more with the work when there is a noticeable interaction interface presented through an obvious form and/or difference in material. Additionally, experimenting with affordances and embodied interaction as a facet of tangible interaction with my work, such as in Week 4, was a well-received approach to guiding users in interacting with my physical-digital systems and thus with the broader space they intend to create/transform. However, I do feel I haven't expanded enough in exploring different types of interactions, especially through different forms and affordances, to properly evaluate what makes this kind of interaction (and specific aspects of it) more effective for engaging audiences. Perhaps a more intentional approach will be needed when implementing it in my future work, as the tangible interaction I've explored so far can be used in many different ways to achieve different ends. For example, if my goal is to help attract and facilitate interaction between passersby and my work, the tangible interaction designed for this case may differ from one designed to retain users' engagement (there are, of course, common threads between these goals and their implications for design as well). The specific goals I want to achieve with tangible interaction should also tie into the other elements of my research question, discussed further below.

Reflection on residual urban space: My initial hunch with choosing "under-utilised space" (as worded in my original research question) was to choose a site that "failed" as a space in some regard, such as being awkward to navigate, appearing as an eyesore, or serving no obvious purpose in an urban landscape. Given I had no prior experience with spatial design before this course, I sought to begin thinking critically about the spaces I am surrounded by through observational techniques such as photo walks conducted in Week 2. After additional reading, I've discovered expanded techniques such as William Whyte's spatial timelapse work (Whyte, 1980) which I believe will help me carry out more thorough site analysis in the future provided I consider the ethical implications of applying these kinds of techniques in Auckland. From peer feedback and my own reflections, I've realised my definition of "under-utilised space" was quite vague and unfocused, causing me to narrow this down to "residual urban space" and guiding me to further reading such as Roger Trancik's work examining "lost space" (1986) and analysing case studies such as Waimahara (located in the previous residual space of the Myers Park underpass) (Tipene, 2024). Another aspect of space I began considering through making in this course was incorporating place-based narratives, drawing from texts such as Wally Penetito's work discussing place-based education (2009) and analysingWaimahara within this lens (see my 5th Contextual Review annotation for more information). Through conducting research into different environmental and historical maps of Auckland in Weeks 3 and 4, I began incorporating these spatial representations into my work to drive different narratives through physical-digital interaction. However, I feel that my method of focusing on Auckland as a broader region limited me from conducting much more detailed site analysis and related making, leaving me with much more to explore as a result. As discussed in my feedback above, I still remain hesitant about what exact aspects of a site I will choose to focus on, and am not even entirely sure that my chosen site will be residual space (in previous weeks, peers have also suggested sites like waiting areas for buses etc., something I had considered in my original research proposal and have not entirely ruled out). My intention for choosing residual space is to transform such a space for more effective use by the public, with the specific goal of facilitating engagement with this space, but this exact form of engagement will depend heavily on the site chosen and may have little to do with the site's current existence as a residual space. My uncertainty around these areas will likely be addressed by choosing a specific site to focus my research on, and I hope to do so in Design Practice 2 so that I may explore site analysis techniques, place-based narratives, and the type of engagement I hope to support through my work in greater depth.

Reflection on lingering as a form of engagement with space: Upon reflection of my work from Weeks 2 to 4, I've realised that lingering has been a key aspect of my work I've tried to achieve engagement through, such as seating areas that allow one to sit and experience a space (sensory engagement), or interaction that encourages connecting with others (social engagement), or place-based narratives that encourage thinking and learning about the environment surrounding a space (environmental engagement). Through encouraging people to linger for an extended period of time, my hope has been that they will engage with other aspects of the work (including the broader space it's situated in) as a result. Additionally, my focus on lingering connects back to my initial problem space of lack of connection in urban space, as supported by Arianna Salazar-Miranda's study on time spent lingering in different American cites which found that “the time spent lingering in these spaces has halved across all locations … the frequency of group encounters declined, indicating fewer interactions in public spaces. This shift suggests that urban residents are using streets as thoroughfares rather than as social spaces" (2025). Through reading and research, I've learned of multiple facets of lingering in spatial design that are important to consider, such as the atmosphere of space (for more information, see my 6th Contextual Review annotation), sense of place (including whether the space encourages or even allows for lingering, and how this aspect of space is conveyed), and tangible and embodied interaction through engagement of the senses (linking back to my focus on tangible interaction). I've enjoyed reflecting on the overlap of these different facets and how they've materialised in my making, such as my focus on the immersiveness of my work in Weeks 2-4 which is arguably an aspect of sense of place that promotes lingering through multisensory engagement. However, this overt link between my work and lingering wasn't established until after the making had concluded, leading me to wondering how I might further explore this aspect of my work and what weighting elements like atmosphere have in achieving the aims of my research (discussed further below). Additionally, I am curious what kind(s) of engagement I could support with lingering, as I have only explored specific types so far (such as sensory engagement, social engagement, and engagement with a place-based narrative), and haven't delved into what exactly these kinds of engagement with space look like beyond spending more time around this place. I intend for lingering to be a metric for analysing the effectiveness of my work, so examining the qualitative nature of lingering and what these different kinds of engagement look like in practice will become important for me to carry out my research. Finally, I am left wondering whether lingering will have the positive effect on supporting engagement that I anticipate it to be, or if it could have a negative effect (eg. deterring others from participating in the space). At this stage, I am unsure how to account for this possibility in my research question, but exploring this through making may be a potential direction to take in the future (such as how I explored creating a negative sense of place through hostile architecture in Week 4).

Reflection on these three facets in tandem, remaining questions, and directions for further creative practice: Looking at these three main aspects of my research question together, I am left with multiple questions such as the following:

• Does tangible interaction itself support lingering?

• Will tangible interaction be a core facet of the work to draw people in, or retain their attention, or both?

• If tangible interaction is able to draw and/or retain engagement, why?

  • Is this because tangible interaction engages multiple senses, thereby supporting immersion and by extension a desire to linger in a space?

  • Is this because tangible interaction promotes direct engagement with the space (touching it, exploring its materials or narrative, etc.)?

  • Is this because tangible interaction makes interaction more engaging and easier to facilitate in general, thus being independent of its location in space and ignoring the effects of more embodied interaction?

• Does lingering become a mere by-product as a result of tangible interaction improving engagement with space?

  • i.e. does lingering become a metric by which to measure the effectiveness of engagement with space, rather than being a catalyst in and of itself for engagement?

  • Does lingering become redundant to measure as a result? Should the focus instead be on the type of engagement in particular?

I am also still trying to determine how all the different elements of my research question come together, and what my ultimate goal or reasoning is for choosing these specific aspects. For example, I have a clear hunch for choosing to focus on tangible interaction in the context of interacting with digital technologies, but I am still trying to figure out how it might link to engagement with space and place (a hunch here is promoting multisensory engagement through immersion, but I am unsure if this counts as a different goal of tangible interaction and is thus separate from the goal of facilitating engagement with digital technologies, thus convoluting my research goals). I am also unsure how and whether related aspects such as sense of place, immersion, atmosphere, etc. come into play in my research: I feel that some of these aspects may be beneficial design influences to consider, but may not be central to my research goals. An earlier example of this was the influence of incorporating a sense of play in my work: this was an initial goal of mine to include, but peer feedback revealed it wasn't directly relevant to my research question. I am still unsure how to balance these "design influences" vs. direct research goals in both my research question and making outputs, but feel I will need to narrow my focus to set more achievable goals in the given master's timeframe.

Ultimately, I am incredibly proud of the work I've produced over the past few weeks, learning new skills and methods such as woodworking, weaving and projection mapping, and working with new materials and processes in timeframes I didn't previously think were possible. I feel I've surprised myself with everything I've been able to achieve in the given timeframes each week, and felt that the time and scale rationing constraints were especially beneficial in supporting my progress throughout the course. I have combatted my usual "analysis paralysis" through focusing on large outputs of making in a short amount of time and am genuinely amazed at everything I was able to accomplish! Although I am left with many questions about my research directions and goals moving forward, these questions have narrowed considerably from what I started with at the beginning of the course. My explorations into different tangible forms and materials, creating spatial design models, and combining physical and digital systems to drive interactions at full scale have opened my eyes to what I'm able to achieve and what gaps I have yet to address through future making. Moving forward, I plan to explore different forms of tangible and embodied interaction, not only to facilitate engagement with digital technologies but also engagement with broader space, and explore how doing so in tandem with atmosphere and sense of place can promote a stronger connection to a given space. I also plan to choose a specific site to trial designing around, allowing me to conduct more in-depth site analysis and place-based research that can drive my design choices with greater clarity. I am excited to pursue further creative practice with these goals in mind and hope to expand my methods beyond rapid prototyping to do so, such as different site analysis techniques beyond photography and creating architectural drawings and blueprints to aid design communication. In conclusion, I am eternally grateful for this course, its instructors, and my fellow peers for the feedback, resources and encouragement that have driven my progress in my master's degree so far!

Sources:

Penetito, W. (2009). Place-Based Education: Catering for Curriculum, Culture and Community. New Zealand Annual Review of Education, 18, 5-29.

Salazar-Miranda, A., Fan, Z., Baick, M., Hampton, K. N., Duarte, F., Loo, B. P. Y., Glaeser, E., & Ratti, C. (2025). Exploring the social life of urban spaces through AI. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(30), e2424662122. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2424662122

Tipene, G. (2024). Waimahara [Public art installation]. Myers Park underpass, Auckland, New Zealand. Auckland Council.

Trancik, R. (1986). Finding lost space: Theories of urban design. Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Whyte, W. H. (1980). The social life of small urban spaces. Conservation Foundation.