Quo Vadis?

Embodied Interaction with Architectural Space1

Christopher P. Lueg
Information & Interaction (i2) Research Group
University of Tasmania
Hobart, TAS, Australia
christopher.lueg@utas.edu.au
ABSTRACT

When conducting in situ wayfinding experiments we

observed that for a variety of reasons, subjects failed to
consider information that was relevant to the navigation
task at hand even though that information appeared to be
readily available. Likely reasons for the failure to notice
include location of the subject, the orientation of the
subject's body relative to relevant information, as well as a
range of issues related to both physiology and psychology
of perception. Drawing from a body of literature on
understanding and modelling human information behaviour
in information science we note that as yet there is no
coherent theory of information behaviour being an
embodied activity. Building such a theory will require
substantial, cross-disciplinary efforts linking work across
information
science,
psychology,
biology,
and
neuroscience, to name a few.
Author Keywords

Interaction, information behaviour; perception;

embodiment.
ACM Classification Keywords

H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI):

Miscellaneous.
INTRODUCTION

Moving around in physical and increasingly also in virtual

environments, checking for information (such as landmarks
in the case of wayfinding) and making decisions on how to
proceed along the way is a core aspect of the human
existence. Conroy (2001, p. 26) defines wayfinding as "the
act of travelling to a destination by a continuous, recursive
process of making route-choices whilst evaluating previous
spatial decisions against constant cognition of the
environment."
The discipline of information science has a long history of
being interested in understanding and modeling information
behaviour, especially information behaviour situated in
built environments and with particular emphasis on office
and library environments. Interest in understanding and
modelling human information behaviour is shared across a

range of disciplines including marketing and architecture

since understanding the way we perceive our environment
is increasingly considered key to delivering successful
outcomes, such as sales and liveability, respectively. As yet
the overlap between the disciplines is limited but growing.
Elsewhere we have pointed out that findings in allied
disciplines regarding the specific characteristics of human
perception suggest to rethink the way we conceptualize
information behaviour in information science (Lueg 2013),
and we argue that this shift may also be useful when
investigating interaction with architectural space.
In particular, we argue that in order to fully understand
human behaviour in natural and constructed spaces we need
to consider behaviour and cognition as an inter-dependent,
emergent, and embodied phenomenon.
Rakova (2006) defines embodiment as "the fact that we are
not pure minds but minds embedded in bodies". The point is
that it is now widely recognized that having an [active]
body is not only required for perceiving (Merleau-Ponty
1962; Gibson 1986) and interacting with the world but
embodiment has also has a crucial role in enabling
intelligent behaviour (e.g., Clark, 1997; Wilson, 2002;
Gallagher, 2005; Pfeifer and Bongard, 2007).
The crux is that knowing about embodiment and its
relevance is one thing but paying attention to the fact in
experimental setups is another. The fact that a coherent
theory of behaviour being an embodied activity is yet to be
developed adds to the pain, especially since developing one
would require substantial, cross-disciplinary efforts linking
research across information science, anthropology,
sociology, psychology, biology, neuroscience, and
philosophy, to name a few.
There is also an unfortunate tendency to treat embodiment
as a somewhat trivial issue. After all, all humans have a
body ("every'body'"). A closer look, however, reveals that
accounting for embodiment and its characteristics makes
understanding behaviour a formidable challenge.

Draft accepted at the CHI 2014 Workshop "Interaction and Architectural Space". Toronto, Canada, 26-27 April 2014.

PEOPLE ARE DIFFERENT

Simply put, no two human bodies are exactly the same

which means that the world looks and feels different to each
of those individuals. Mentioning that we have bodies of
different weight and height, that we move at different
speeds and gaits, and that our hearing and eyesight may
vary considerably appears to be trivial but it is not once we
take into consideration that those individual characteristics
impact on how we perceive the world. Body height directly
influences what we can easily perceive and grab
(supermarket shelves are stocked accordingly) and so does
eyesight and, to some extent, hearing.
To some extent we are aware that our mood affects what we
pay attention to and that our bodily condition affects how
we perceive our surroundings. There is a reason as to why
people should avoid doing their grocery shopping when
they feel hungry (e.g., Malik et al 2008).

'obvious': thought processes and the body's motion are

linked in ways that researchers are only beginning to
understand (see e.g., Taylor et al 2009). See also Keilty's
(2012) discussion of factors such as "anxiety, desire,
leisure, pleasure, boredom, frustration, uncertainty,
curiosity, serendipity, surprise, anticipation, immersion,
sense-making or cognition, habits, and memory, among
others".
To sum up, it is fair to say that the surrounding environment
looks and feels differently to every individual, which in turn
affects to some extent how they think and goes well beyond
'situational factors' (e.g., Barry 1994) that affect
information behaviors.
The statement holds true even without taking into
consideration identified conditions that affect what might
be called neurotypical (Dalton 2013) or conditions
including colour vision deficiencies (the often used 'colour
blindness' is a misnomer since people affected by the
condition do see colours they just see them differently).
These considerations may offer yet another approach to
explaining as to why people get lost in buildings, in
addition to the three contributing factors the spatial
structure of the building, the cognitive maps that users
construct as they navigate, and the strategies and spatial
abilities of the building users (Carlson et al 2010).
To be sure we do not claim that there are no similarities and
statistical patterns in the way people perceive their
surroundings. Without sharing these similarities we would
find it hard to form societies, conduct trade, drive cars, and
so on. It does mean however that if we really want to know
how people experience architectural space we need to
understand how individuals perceive the space as opposed
to how 'most' people perceive the space.
COLLECTING DATA: "IT'S A TRAP"

Figure 1 Anar Foundation Against Child Abuse display

leveraging differences in height and therefore perspective

The tasks that we work on or that plays on our minds also

affect what we pay attention to: "Our eye movements are
not driven by what is biggest, brightest, or flashiest in a
visual scene. They reflect the purpose of our looking."
(Ellard, 2009). Rothkopf et al. (2007) state more formally
"[...] in the execution of extended natural tasks, human
gaze is directed toward regions of the visual scene that are
determined primarily by the task requirements." This
doesn't mean that we don't pay attention to visually noisy
aspects in the environment just that they do not necessarily
drive what we pay attention to.
Most people would be unaware that the way we move has
an impact on how we perceive the world beyond the

In Lueg (2013) we presented a first overview of the

different types of information we are exposed to, some of
which we are able to perceive. We also relate a number of
cognitive phenomena, such as inattentional blindness
(Mack and Rock, 1998) or platonic blindness (Dunham and
Banaji 2010), to how different people perceive their
environment. Research regarding these cognitive
phenomena indicates that even if a subject 'looks' into a
certain direction that does not mean that the information is
consciously perceived, which makes analysing their
experience rather difficult. These cognitive characteristics
have evolved to help humans cope with continuous
information overload (Lueg and Pfeifer 1997) which means
they need to be seen as both strengths and weaknesses:
"[inattentional blindness] is the price we pay for the gift of
attention." (Green, 2011).
Understanding how individuals perceive a space is a nontrivial task especially since many approaches, including
those commonly used in information, heavily rely on
reported data, typically collected via interviews,

questionnaires, or "thinking aloud" sessions. In Lueg (2013)

we question that approach to analysing and modelling
information behaviour on the grounds that what we call
'positive' data offers limited insights into what information
a subject failed to notice (means they can't report on it), and
typically no insights as to why they failed to do so.
Furthermore, human capacity for introspection is limited
(Nisbett and Wilson 1977) which means that even if
subjects do report what they believe they noticed, the
explanations may be post-hoc rationalizations (i.e.,
explanations that make sense to the subject but don't
necessarily represent what happened).
A related that we encountered in wayfinding research is that
post experiment questionnaires (e.g., "which landmarks did
you use?") test recall, i.e., a person's memory capacity, not
necessarilyas intendedsaliency of landmarks (Bidwell
et al. 2005).
The challenge is still to analyse moment-to-moment,
embodied interaction with the environment, including other
people: "The basic unit of analysis must connect thinking to
action in the world and contribute to clarifying precisely
how cognition enters into and is part of the diverse set of
tasks in which people engage. Furthermore, because
virtually all activity is socially distributed, social units
rather than individuals become the appropriate unit of
analysis for cognition." (Resnick et al., 1997). The effort
required for doing so, however, is tremendous. As
discussed in Lueg (2013), complementing traditional
qualitative data collection methods with ethnographic
methods, such as participant observation combined with
third party "ideal observer" analyses of the situation at
hand, would address some of the issues but the additional
effort is high and accuracy typically low (e.g., gaze
direction). Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, inattentional
blindness and other cognitive characteristics suggest even if
a subject looks into a certain direction that does not mean
that the information is consciously perceived and 'actioned'.
COLLECTING ADDITIONAL 'EVIDENCE'

There are a number of ways how technology can assist with

collecting data about interaction with architectural space,
among them
Gaze-tracking

When Barry (1994) and others interested in situational

factors in information behaviour conducted their
experiments they had to do so largely without tracking
technologies that are available these days. Few information
science researchers have employed eye tracking techniques
to this date. Realising the potential, Erdelez (2004)
proposed to use the technology to explore "noticing" in
information encountering using subjects sitting in front of
computers. Balatsoukas and Ruthven (2012) also used
stationary setups when exploring relevance assessments. In
the area of ubiquitous computing, Bulling et al. (2011)

identified characteristic patterns in eye movements that can

be used to identify certain types of tasks, such as reading,
that subjects are working on while their gaze is being
tracked.
Gaze tracking is frequently used in studies of consumer
behaviour (e.g., Shayon 2012) which is an area that is
highly relevant to information behaviour research and
studying interaction with architectural space: knowing in
great detail as to what people look at (and potentially pay
attention to) but also what information they do not pay
attention to will allow to ground behavioral models in
richer data than is currently available. Psychophysiological
measurements could be used to complement the data (e.g.,
Nacke et al 2010).
Virtual reality environments

Using virtual reality environments for researching

interaction with architectural space has become popular.
One reason is that environments can be tested without
having to build them in the real work. Another that "[i]n a
virtual environment [...] the creator of the world (or the
designer of the experiment) knows precisely what
components went into the creation that world. A researcher
using a virtual test-environment can be confident that the
world will consist of only those factors that the researcher
has chosen to include in the world. [...] Variables being
investigated (for their effect) can be examined by including
or altering only those variables in the world." (Conroy
2001, p. 17; see also Zimring and Conroy-Dalton 2003).
An issue is that cognition understood as an embodied
phenomenon means that when people "feel" differently
while navigating virtual reality environments, their
perception will be different too. It would be fascinating to
know the nature of those differences and how exactly they
impact on perception. Consumer research esp. marketing
developed a bag full of tricks (background music, smell,
special lighting, tables as 'stoppers', tables that afford
grabbing, etc.) to influence shopper perception and
associated buying behaviours.
CONCLUSION

Accepting that perception is an embodied phenomenon

suggests that understanding interaction with architectural
space is a multi-disciplinary challenge ranging from more
formal aspects like design patterns and space syntax to the
specific characteristics of human behaviour and cognition.
If we need to clarify precisely how cognition enters into
and is part of the diverse set of tasks in which people
engage to understand interaction with architectural space
(which we argue for) then we need to develop a broader set
of data collection and interpretation methods to tackle the
challenge.
We believe there is much to gain in looking 'over the fence'
from architecture to information science, and vice versa.
For example, Gibson's (1986) theory of affordances which

frequently used to explain how people navigate spaces was

used by Sadler and Given (2007) to understand how
students perceive and use the various opportunities for
action (books, databases, instructional sessions, librarians,
physical space, etc.) offered by the local library and how
these perceived affordances matched librarians intentions
and expectations.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

tba
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