Fluito: Towards Understanding the Design of Playful Water Experiences through an Extended Reality Floatation Tank System

The ACM Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY)

Maria F. Montoya, YuYang Ji, Ryan Wee, Nathalie Overdevest, Rakesh Patibanda, Aryan Saini, Sarah Jane Pell, and Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller.

Abstract

Water's pleasant nature and associated health benefits have captivated the interest of HCI researchers. Prior WaterHCI work mainly focused on advancing instrumental applications, such as improving swimming performance, and less on designing systems that support interacting with technology in water in more playful contexts. In this regard, we propose floatation tanks as research vehicles to investigate the design of playful interactive water experiences. Employing somaesthetic design, we developed a playful extended reality floatation tank experience: "Fluito". We conducted a 13-participant study to understand how specific design features amplified participants' water experiences. We used a postphenomenological lens to articulate eight strategies useful for designers aiming to develop digital playful experiences in water, such as designing to call attention to the water and designing to encourage breathing and body awareness in water experiences. Ultimately, we hope that our work supports people to be playful and benefit from the many advantages of being in water.

Maria F. Montoya, YuYang Ji, Ryan Wee, Nathalie Overdevest, Rakesh Patibanda, Aryan Saini, Sarah Jane Pell, and Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller. 2023. Fluito: Towards Understanding the Design of Playful Water Experiences through an Extended Reality Floatation Tank System. In. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 7, CHI PLAY, Article 410 (November 2023), 28 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3611056 DOI: doi.org/10.1145/3611056.

CHI PLAY is the international and interdisciplinary conference (by ACM SIGCHI) for researchers and professionals across all areas of play, games and human-computer interaction (HCI). We call this area “player-computer interaction.” CHI PLAY ’23, 10-13 October 2023 – Stratford, Canada https://chiplay.acm.org/2023/

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