Materiality Matters—
Experience Materials
Mikael Wiberg, Hiroshi Ishii, Paul Dourish,
Anna Vallgårda, Tobie Kerridge, Petra Sundström,
Daniela Rosner, and Mark Rolston

tions related to how we might conceptualize the inseparability of digital materials, user experiences, and the social context.

Aiming to address the current theoretical discourse in HCI focused on conceptualizing material integrations under the notion of materiality, we realized our panel session was quite timely. In browsing the technical program of last year’s CHI conference, we noticed that it contained at least three full papers on materials and materiality, one best paper, one alt.chi talk, two Doctoral Consortium papers, two posters, one interactivity presentation, one video presentation, and one complete paper session explicitly focused on materiality as a way to conceptualize these issues. We sought to contribute to this vibrant stream of research in our field.

March + April 2013

interactions

The theme for last year’s ACM CHI 2012 conference—It’s the experience— underscores an important shift in HCI research: a move away from a perspective that treats people and computers as two separate and distinct entities toward a perspective that acknowledges how people, computational materials, and even traditionally non-computational materials are coming together as a whole, forming our experiences in and of the world. This shift might enable us to rethink what computing can be about, and, accordingly, what experiences of interacting with computers might include. It also simultaneously prompts us to conceptualize computers not as black boxes, but as yet another design material operating in concert with other physical materials— again, with a focus on what these material assemblages can enable in terms of new user experiences and new practices.

At CHI 2012 we organized a panel titled “Material Interactions— From Atoms and Bits to Entangled Practices” [ 1]. The panel was specifically arranged to discuss assemblages of digital and physical materials and how these compositions might form and enable new experiences, as well as ques-

The Need for a Shared Vocabulary and a Multifaceted Understanding In the panel we acknowledged that although the topic is highly specific, we have developed a wide range of

Photographs of Droplet by Robert Hemsley and Henry Holtzman

• Droplet is a tangible interface that explores the movement of information between digital and physical. Through light-based communication, data can be extracted and presented in a physical form, altering our perception and understanding.