Being in the world is to flow with the currents of life, of change and contingency. We perceive what is relevant to our situation and appropriately respond to attain a more desirable state. This basic phenomenon of coping plays out continuously at multiple scales of our activity and has been argued as the fundamental way in which we engage with the world. Coping skilfully is to be able to perceive and act in a nuanced manner, attuned to the situation and able to act smoothly and with minimal conscious effort. If coping underpins activity, what are the implications for interaction design, which involves the design of activity? This article explores this question, showing how coping provides a novel perspective on the core phenomena of interaction design. We suggest a framework, consisting of four lenses, for situating the concerns of coping in interaction design: malleability, direct manipulability, meta manipulability and social manipulability. In our discussion we argue why coping is novel and relevant for interaction design, and how it expands upon existing perspectives on situated, resourceful action and challenges notion of rich action and coupling.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is envisioned as a global net- work of connected things enabling ubiquitous machine-to-machine (M2M) communication. With estimations of billions of sensors and devices to be connected in the coming years, the IoT has been advocated as having a great potential to impact the way we live, but also how we work. How- ever, the connectivity aspect in itself only accounts for the underlying M2M infrastructure. In order to properly support engineering IoT sys- tems and applications, it is key to orchestrate heterogeneous ’things’ in a seamless, adaptive and dynamic manner, such that the system can ex- hibit a goal-directed behaviour and take appropriate actions. Yet, this form of interaction between things needs to take a user-centric approach and by no means elude the users’ requirements. To this end, contextu- alisation is an important feature of the system, allowing it to infer user activities and prompt the user with relevant information and interactions even in the absence of intentional commands. In this work we propose a role-based model for emergent configurations of connected systems as a means to model, manage, and reason about IoT systems including the user’s interaction with them. We put a special focus on integrating the user perspective in order to guide the emergent configurations such that systems goals are aligned with the users’ intentions. We discuss related scientific and technical challenges and provide several uses cases outlining the concept of emergent configurations.

In Schön’s account, contingency is encountered in the essential reflective dialogue with the design situation, in move-making, reflection and move-making again. Design moves are concrete, yet also speculative in that their outcome cannot be fully ascertained a priori. Once performed, we may be in a position to judge whether the outcome is aligned with our intentions, or whether something rather different was produced. Unexpected results can be revealing and inspiring, or close down exploration, shutting off further lines of inquiry. Designers may operate in a loose, experimental manner and by definition outcomes will have a greater degree of unexpectedness. Importantly, however, the designer does not intend for a specific outcome, but rather intends for experimentation, guided only by loose framing. Un- expected results cannot be considered a mistake or error under these conditions because that is precisely what is intended. We seek to diminish the event and significance of ‘mistakes’ and ‘errors’, and argue instead that experimental practice is to operate with a looser ‘grip’ on the design situation. We contrast this with non-experimental design practice and develop a phenomenologically-informed account of design practice.

For over 50 years, hormone-based contraceptives have allowed women to control their fertility, thus reconfiguring society and how women relate to their body. On the horizon are long-life microchip-based implanted contraceptives that can be turned on and off, which may further the societal disruptions of "the pill". Framed as interactive technology, we speculate on the design space of controllable implanted contraceptives. We explored existing implanted contraceptives through a performance ethnography of their implantation. Inspiration from this process informed a speculative video of living with controllable implants and a guide for healthcare professionals. These materials, along with expert presentations, backgrounded a design workshop in which participants unpacked issues around controllable contraceptive implants. Participants created and roleplayed physical mock-ups of controllers, manifesting discussions around security, relationships and hormones. Drawing from the outcomes of the workshop, we produce a speculative design in the form of a film and physical mock-ups.

Practicing designers must usually relate to branding in some manner. A designed artifact must support the brand in a constructive way and help establish positive brand experiences, which in turn have strategic value for the brand's institution. While there is obvious application of visual branding knowledge to the visual form of interactive artifacts, interviews with expert practitioners reveal a lack of systematic means to craft an interaction aesthetic to support a brand. Our empirical study relates attributes of interactive experience to that of 'brand personality', a common way of quantifying how a brand should be perceived. We show that particular attributes of interactivity, such as whether an interaction has a continuous rather than discrete flow, are related to particular brand traits. Our empirical results establish a clear commercial significance for deeper, systematic ways of analyzing and critiquing interactive experiences.