Design qualities for whole body interaction: learning from golf, skateboarding and BodyBugging

What is it that is makes swinging a club to hit a ball so captivating and fun that people spend their whole lives perfecting that one movement? In this paper we present how we, rather than to invent something off-line in a lab, have returned to the real world to get inspiration and studied full body movement activities with non-digital artefacts that have track records of ensnaring and hooking practitioners for a life time, golf and skateboarding. We have also looked at a new interactive movement device called the BodyBug. We explore how the skilled use of the artefacts puts people in contact with and let them experience the world in an essentially new way. We identify and present 8 design qualities for Whole Body Interaction, based on people's performances in these activities. The interdependency between user, artefact and physical environment was a primary driving forces behind rich, sustained and graceful interaction with the artefacts.

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