Tensing Turns
Subtle Interactions for turn-taking during important meetings.
Course Project | Designer, Researcher
Interaction Design, Embodied Interaction, Low Fidelity, Rapid Prototyping
April 2023 - July 2023
Jelle van Dijk (Supervisor)
Lucas van Laarhoven (Project Team)
Turn-taking is an essential component of conversations. To be able to know when to respectfully cut someone off or speak up is an important social skill which is required in all forms of social interactions. The same could be said for group meetings. Often or most, some individuals struggle to know when to speak up during a group meeting and share their opinions and ideas. Our proposed solution is Tensing Turns, an embodied, low-fidelity artefact which is developed to help teams understand each other's desire to speak up during a conversation.
Design Challenge
Company and team meetings are fundamental for effective collaboration and decision-making within organizations. However, these gatherings often suffer from imbalanced participation, where certain individuals, sometimes unknowingly, dominate the conversation while others struggle to interject or contribute their ideas. These struggles often come from micro-interactions, which are often overlooked. Utilising Research through Design how can we support turn-taking within the context of meetings using an embodied object?
First Prototype
We began by utilising various scraps and tinkering with the various affordances of each object, exploring how different material invited a different forms of interactions. Based on this, the team took an interest in the rope; which allowed for pulling and twisting motions. More so, this tension could only be achieved by pulling the rope on two opposite ends, requiring two equal forces. However, when the force pulling the rope isn't equal, this creates push-and-pull phenomena similar to that of tug of war. Similar to people taking turns in conversations, there is a push and a pull. A speaker and a listener.
Second prototype
Unlike the first prototype, the second prototype focused on allowing the users to visualize the tension, rather than feeling the tension. The second prototype addressed a bigger group; instead of a one-on-one turn-taking tool, it was designed to be able to incorporate four people in one meeting.
By placing the ‘pole’ or ‘handles’ upright, the slider in the middle will rise. Only if two or more poles are also upright. The movement of placing the pole upright indicates one of two things. Either the person is currently speaking, or another person has something to say. This symbolism of the tension is a direct visual representation that indicates that an individual would like to speak.
Tensing Turns
For our final prototype, we wanted to explore the secondary feeling which was a direct effect of tension. Which is argued as a balance. By utilizing multiple ropes and multiple tension points to hang an object, it will create a balance, until it is moved by an external force, either by being swayed, pushed, or pulled.
Tensing Turns is argued to be open-ended, and individuals could make sense of what they are experiencing in their way. Simple swings, taps or nudges on the disc can be felt and given different meanings depending on the context and the group utilizing the artefact. Some examples could be to understand that someone wants to take a turn in the conversation; which is the original goal, or it could also be used to determine how nervous someone is feeling during a meeting, or simply to physically feel another team member’s attention in the meeting.
The link between multiple users, and multiple tensions of rope attached to one object will eventually reach an equilibrium point, creating a balance. Allowing people to interact with the disk, balancing out their tensions. Individuals could then place their feet on the disk and begin to push it down, tap it, or move it around, shifting the balance of the disk. This movement will then be felt by the other individuals as the balance starts to shift.
