For your reading convenience, we have created one handy joint PDF of all accepted workshop papers.  If you’d rather parse and peruse the individual papers, here they are:

Sebastian Deterding, Andrès Lucero, Jussi Holopainen, Chulhong Min, Adrian Cheok, Annika Waern, Steffen P. Walz

Embarrassing Interactions

Wherever the rapid evolution of interactive technologies disrupts standing situational norms, creates new, often unclear situational audiences, or crosses cultural boundaries, embarrassment is likely. This makes embarrassment a fundamental adoption and engagement hurdle, but also a creative design space for human-computer interaction. However, research on embarrassment in HCI has remained scattered and unsystematic so far. This workshop therefore convenes researchers and practitioners to assemble and advance the current state of research on embarrassing interactions. Paper.

Jon Back

The Embarrassing Act of Becoming a Street Performance Audience

The paper deals with engagement with information technology in public space by comparing it to how street performers deal with similar situations. One key example is presented. In this example, the importance of the difference between street-as-street and street-as-stage is presented, and the unease or embarrassment, this causes the audience is discussed. Paper.

Michael Greenberg

Public Online Failure With Crowdfunding

Kickstarter is a growing online crowdfunding platform where individuals attempt to raise funds for creative projects by leveraging their personal social networks for small financial contributions. Crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter are actively growing, with thousands of individuals attempting projects each month. While other scholarly research and the popular press has focused on the success stories from crowdfunding, the fact remains that a majority of projects fail. Little attention has focused on the majority of individuals who have run failed projects and experienced a publicly embarrassing event in the process. We see crowdfunding platforms as a unique opportunity to study and understand how individuals react to online embarrassment. Paper.

Myounghoon Jeon

Embarrassment as a Divergent Process for Creative Arts in the Immersive Virtual Environment

In our virtual environment studio at Michigan Tech, a performing artist makes analog and digital penwald drawings, lying down on a huge canvas, dancers create music and visuals by dancing, and children and a puppy make interactive arts together. In each case, there are different embarrassing moments (e.g., how, what, and who) to audience and even an artist. However, those embarrassing moments are real points that “make arts arts”. Our works are highlighted in the line of embarrassing points of traditional arts and implications of embarrassment for design research are discussed. Paper.

Ben Kirman, Sabine Harrer, Andrea Hasselager, Conor Linehan, Ida Toft and Raimund Schumacher

Cunt Touch This: A Conversation on Intimate Design and Embarrassment

This position paper presents a conversation between players and the designers of the unique mobile game experience Cunt Touch This. Revisiting their personal experiences with playing the game, the player-authors read the game as a system that takes advantage of social embarrassment as a key element from which the pleasure of the game is derived. Contrasting this view, the designer-authors comment on the original intention, production context and purpose of Cunt Touch This. The goal of this confrontation is to explore embarrassment as a feeling oscillating between the emotional and the political dimensions of play. The unusual discussion format of the paper allows us to invite potentially challenging questions: When, where and why does embarrassment come about? What function does it have in play? Is it just part of the fun, or ideologically charged? Drawing together our differing perspectives as players and designers we contribute a candid reflection on the wider issues of embarrassment as it relates to design. Paper.

Wei Eng Koh, Jocelyn Sie, Johnson Graham and Andrea Szymkowiak

Awkward Shopping: The Embarrassing & Embarrassed Ethnographer

How often do you open up about your embarrassing moments to others, even entertaining their prying? We recognise that embarrassment is a social construct that most people wish to hide and is rarely discussed openly. Using an ethnographic approach, we explored the value and challenges of studying consumers’ embarrassing experiences in retail contexts. In particular, reflecting upon our experience as ethnographers with that of the respondents during the study, and the implications for future research. Paper.

Robb Mitchell

Embarrassing to Collaborate?

This position paper briefly outlines my interest in embarrassment – principally in relation to experiments provoking collaborative encounters in contexts that range from urban spaces to art galleries, and from music events to industrial innovation workshops. Paper.

Nikhil Sharma

“Siri Thinks I Have Two Wives” & Other Embarrassing Voice Interactions

Voice use is gaining prominence. However, people feel awkward using voice user interactions (UIs) around others. This is because voice UIs can be particularly embarrassing. Based on two years of research on voice UIs, I suggest some reasons why voice UIs can be particularly embarrassing. I also list research questions that can help guide development of voice UIs. I hope the workshop will provide an interesting forum to discuss challenges as well as opportunities for reducing embarrassment while using voice UIs. Paper.

Annika Waern and Jaakko Stenros

Trust and Intimate Interaction in Nordic Larp

Intimate play can be perceived as embarrassing or intrusive, it can violate personal boundaries, or make players feel unsafe. At the same time, intimate play can be fun, exhilarating, and trust-building. We look into intimate interactions in Nordic larp to get deeper insights into what triggers one reaction, or the other. Paper.

Gavin Wood and Madeline Balaam

Playing with Embarrassment

We are interested in embarrassing interactions as part of wider research that explores digital games in our public spaces through a lens of play. Embarrassing interactions are an important feature of play and an inevitable facet of pervasive games. In this abstract we discuss several inspirational designs where a wide range of play includes opportunity to explore, manage and leverage embarrassment. We describe our method for creating more “playful” games and discuss the type of interactions we expect to experience and capture. We then describe how these interactions are embodied in our design exemplar identity and introduce our latest work and our early results. Paper.

Matt Wood and Madeline Balaam

Art work: Blow Up Body Mapping

An innovative design method devised to get individuals talking about sex. We put a playful spin on the concept of body mapping, with an activity whereby participants to map a landscape of sex and sexuality on some gender-neutral blow up dolls. No paper.