Don’t Forget About the Sweat: Effortful Embodied Interaction in Support of Learning

This paper describes a frequently-overlooked aspect of embodied interaction design: physical effort. Although exertion is the direct goal of many embodied activities (e.g., exergames), and is used indirectly to discourage certain user interactions (as with affordances), exertion has not been used to support direct expressive interaction with an embodied system. Situating exertion in both psychological and physiological literature, this paper suggests guidelines for employing exertion as more than just an incidental component of proprioception in embodied interaction designs. Specifically, the linkages between exertion, affect, and recall are reviewed and analyzed for their potential to support embodied learning activities, and literature concerning human perceptions of effort is reviewed to help designers understand how to incorporate effort more directly and intentionally in embodied interaction designs. Also presented is an illustration of how these guidelines affected the design of an educational embodied interaction experience for an informal learning setting.