Documenting the Elusive and Ephemeral in Embodied Design Ideation Activities

Documenting embodied ideation activities is challenging, as they often result in ephemeral design constructs and elusive design knowledge difficult to document and represent. Here, we explore documentation forms designers can use internally during the design process in the domain of movement-based interaction in collocated, social settings. Using previous work and our experience from embodied ideation workshops, we propose three documentation forms with complementing perspectives of embodied action from a first and a third person view. We discuss how they capture ephemeral embodied action and elusive design and experiential knowledge, in relation to two interdependent aspects of documentation forms: their performativity and the medium they use. The novelty of these forms lies in what is being captured: ephemeral design constructs that emerge as designers engage with the embodied ideation activity; how it is portrayed: in aggregation forms that highlight elusive design knowledge; and their purpose: to clarify and augment analytical results improving the designer-researchers’ understanding of key aspects of the embodied ideation process and its outcomes, useful to advance the design process and for research dissemination.

Documenting the Elusive and Ephemeral in Embodied Design Ideation Activities Articles