COVIDware: Designing Interactive Everyday Things as Tangible Homeware for Social Isolation

Abstract

This paper describes our collaborative journey of creating everyday interactive artefacts to help us think, reflect, and live through self-isolation. Through a co-design approach, we designed interactive homeware objects (that we collectively refer to as ‘COVIDware’) to address the challenges of isolation during the pandemic. Five artefacts were developed by self-isolated designers as interactive art installations. We discuss how each creator reflected on her design concept, process, and encounter through concepts of critical making, speculation, and engagement via in-the-isolated-wild deployments. By empowering early researchers/enthusiasts to design ‘with’ smart-materials, and off-the-shelf items, we reflect on how these homey interfaces can enhance people’s wellbeing beyond screen-based interactions. Despite not collaborating in the making process, our findings from the designer’s making process show how all the designed artefacts shared attributes of biophilic design, imperfection, and unconventional interactions with the overarching goal of promoting wellbeing, and meaningful connection with nature, self, and others.