Move to Design: Tactics and Challenges of Playful Movement-based Interaction Designers’ Experiences during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Design practices targeting playful movement-based interaction are changing rapidly with both technological and societal developments. In this paper, we provide a snapshot of movement-based interaction designers’ experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic, by interviewing designers working in diverse roles that integrate physical human body movement and digital technologies (i.e., exergame and wearable game designers, playground and landscape architects, sports and dance trainers, and Sports-HCI professionals). Using grounded theory, we have identified two tactics from the designers’ experiences: (i) the significance of face-to-face embodied interactions throughout the entire movement-based interaction design process, and (ii) the importance of positive, yet critical, attitudes to technology for designing bodily experiences, including mixed use of non-technical materials and tools for rapid prototyping and iteration. However, it was evident that such tactics are often not feasible without physical interaction between the designer and users. The restrictions imposed by Covid-19, therefore, further revealed the importance of body movement to designing a playful movement-based interaction — from ideation to execution and testing. This paper offers a worrying view of movement-based interaction design during the Covid-19 era, while calling for further investigation to enrich the discourse that could contribute to this field, possibly also beyond the circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic.