Designing for Perceptual Crossing: Applying and Evaluating Design Notions

Eva Deckers, Pierre Levy, Stephan Wensveen, Rene Ahn, Kees Overbeeke

In this paper we describe our research on how to design for perceptual crossing between person and artefact. We present the design-research process, the design and evaluation of the designed artefact PeP+, short for perception pillar plus, and the generated design relevant knowledge. In our previous research we formulated a number of design notions, namely Focus the Senses, Active Behaviour Object, Subtleness, Reaction to External Event, Detecting Active Behaviour Subject, Reflecting Contextual Noise and Course of Perception in Time. These notions are relevant for designing perceptive activity in an artefact to allow for perceptual crossing between a person and this artefact. The person is able to get the feeling of sharing a common space with the artefact: to feel involved. To further investigate these design notions we reconsidered and implemented them in the design of PeP+. We discuss how the different design notions are applied in the artefact and show their relevance in an experiment. In this experiment we compare three behaviours, namely random, following and active, of PeP+ that are the result of the development of the design notions. The experiment gave insights into the development of the design notions and the experience of the person. This research uses phenomenology as a theoretical framework. Theory is used as inspiration and is the basis for synthesis.