Title
The Enactive Torch: A New Tool for the Science of Perception
Abstract
The cognitive sciences are increasingly coming to terms with the embodied, embedded, extended, and experiential aspects of the mind. Exemplifying this shift, the enactive approach points to an essential role of goal-directed bodily activity in the generation of meaningful perceptual experience, i.e., sense-making. Here, building on recent insights into the transformative effects of practical tool-use, we make use of the enactive approach in order to provide a definition of an enactive interface in terms of augmented sense-making. We introduce such a custom-built interface, the Enactive Torch, and present a study of its experiential effects. The results demonstrate that the user experience is not adequately captured by any standardly assumed perceptual modality; rather, it is a new feeling that is mediated by the design of the device and shaped by the overall situation of the task. Taken together these findings show that there is much to be gained by synergies between engineering and the cognitive sciences in the creation of new experience-centered technology. We suggest that the guiding principle should be the design of interfaces that serve as a transparent medium for augmenting our natural skills of interaction with the world, instead of requiring conscious attention to the interface as an opaque object in the world.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1109/TOH.2011.57
Haptics, IEEE Transactions
Keywords
Field
DocType
cognitive systems,augmented sense-making,cognitive sciences,custom-built interface,embedded aspects,embodied aspects,enactive interface,enactive torch,experiential aspects,goal-directed bodily activity,science of perception,sense-making,Deployment,Haptic I/O,human-centered computing,usage experience,user-centered design
Experiential learning,User experience design,Information processing,Transformative learning,Computer science,Embodied cognition,Human–computer interaction,Human-centered computing,Perception,User-centered design
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
5
4
1939-1412
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
15
1.40
3
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Froese, T.1151.40
McGann, M.2151.40
Bigge, W.3151.40
Spiers, A.4151.40