1 Enhancing Multisensory Environments with Design Artifacts for Tangible Interaction Héctor A. Caltenco Certec, Dept. of Design Sciences, LTH Sölvegatan 26 223 62 Lund, Sweden +46 46 222 08 77 hector.caltenco@certec.lth.se Henrik Svarrer Larsen Certec, Dept. of Design Sciences, LTH Sölvegatan 26 223 62 Lund, Sweden +46 46 222 40 38 henrik.svarrer.larsen@certec.lth.se Per-Olof Hedvall Certec, Dept. of Design Sciences, LTH Sölvegatan 26 223 62 Lund, Sweden +46 46 222 40 94 per-olof.hedvall@certec.lth.se ABSTRACT Even though multisensory environments (MSE) incorporate artifacts and technology to provide sensory stimuli, most of these artifacts are non-interactive. Twenty-four children with profound developmental disabilities from three MSE institutions have been involved in a research study. A handful of interactive design artifacts, which have been developed as a tool for ideation and to enhance the use of MSE by promoting children’s engagement are presented. With these artifacts the children have shown us a vast topology of interaction and bodily engagement, showing a potential for haptic and audio interactive design fields to contribute to a more participatory MSE practice. Keywords Tangible interaction, disability, children, MSE, artifacts, interfaces, physical computing, arduino, capsense, Kinect 1. INTRODUCTION The pedagogical Snoezelen practice, or multisensory environment (MSE), has been described as another world [5]. It does not rely on verbal communication, but instead incorporates sensory artifacts and environments to blend sensory stimuli, such as sights, sounds, textures, aromas and motion, with the purpose of enabling a child or adult with developmental disability to find the calmness or impetus needed to engage in the world. These artifacts are used to build an environment that initiates changes in arousal by affecting the relaxation process, reducing anxiety and/or pain (both physical and emotional). Currently, the artifacts found in MSE rooms are reactive, if at all, via push buttons and switches. Many of them only produce non-interactive dynamic stimuli. Very few of these artifacts are interactive by computational means, and the ones that are do not seem to have tight and co-located coupling and lack more elaborated behavior. The purpose of this paper is to open up for dialogue and ideation with our colleagues in the haptics and audio interaction design fields to contribute to a more interactive and participatory MSE practice. A demo of the design artifacts is to be presented at the conference. This paper is based on a paper by Larsen and Hedvall [4], and on the ongoing work in the SID project (http://sid.desiign.org), in which twenty-four children with profound developmental disabilities and pedagogical staffs from three MSE institutions participate. The project tries to dive into exploring ways that continuous coupling interaction can involve tactile and proprioceptive senses of such children, therefore promoting and enhancing the children’s engagement in the MSE. This is done by using interactive tangible computing artifacts to enhance the children’s interactive experience. The project’s design process has three foci [4]: a) The use of proximal senses, tactile pressure, vibration, balance, etc. rather than solely the prevailing audio- visuals. b) The use of co-located continuous (and gradual) coupling interaction, instead of the current binary (on/off) interaction found in the common MSE practice. c) The use of an aesthetic perspective perceiving artifacts as entities with rudimentary agency, which is both predictable and yet never the same. The three foci bring sensitivities and curiosities to the fieldwork. But they also bring delimitations derived from the need of a more narrow scope, leaving out fields such as scent, gaze tracking, wearable computing and speech recognition. However, the foci relate very closely to the field of haptics, there is a natural relationship between physicality and touch [1]. The inclusion of haptic and sound feedback as part of the MSE artifacts could provide a strong pillar for collaboration between haptic research and the MSE practice. The current paper describes the design artifacts used as an integral part of the research process. These basic yet interactive design artifacts are not products to be introduced to the MSE practice, but tools for ideation, sketches that are continuously being reshaped and reinserted into the collaboration with the MSE institutions. 2. DESIGN ARTIFACTS The design artifacts in the project are explorative interactive sketches aimed to enhance the children’s interactive experience and participation. Mock-ups had to be ruled out, as participants in the project cannot take part in interplays that require pretending or abstract thinking and dialogues. Wizard-of-Oz prototypes [2] were also ruled out for the most part, as the children indeed paid attention to “the man behind the curtain”, instead of to the actual interaction. Therefore the design artifacts have to be interactive yet should also be manifold and easy to alter as we learn from the children’s actions. Some of the design artifacts are presented Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Conference’10, Month 1–2, 2010, City, State, Country. 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