Technology Choreography: Studying Interactions in Microsoft’s Future Visions Through Dance

Abstract

In the future, an increasing number of devices will be utilized in concert to support human activities, but little is known about how these interacting multidevice settings should be designed optimally in a human-centered manner. We report on a study in which we took two visions created by the Microsoft Corporation as a starting point. The aim of the paper is to describe a method for user-centered design that extends the ideas of a choreographic approach to interaction design and to demonstrate how micromovement analysis can be conducted in practice. We utilized a structural reorganization of movement continua originally presented in the videos for a first-person enactment of that choreography as a means to understand the kinesthetic quality and the potential of the implied choreographies. The approach underscores the influence of interaction designs on the moving and experiencing body, as well as the potential that the moving and experiencing body has for interaction design.