Designing Playful Experiences with Imaging Capsules

Imaging capsules are ingestible sensors that capture the video of one’s gastrointestinal tract for medical diagnosis. We believe that the capsule’s experiential perspective is often overlooked, i.e. we argue that there is also potential for “fun”.

We explore the design of this experiential perspective through combining imaging capsules with digital play. We designed a playful wearable system called “InsideOut”, where users play with the real-time video of their gastrointestinal tract captured by an imaging capsule.

Based on an in-the-wild study, our research highlights the opportunity of using medical imaging technologies to enable intriguing bodily play experiences. Furthermore, such experiences can deepen players’ engagement with and understanding of their bodies, ultimately contributing to a more playful and humanized healthcare agenda.

Publications

Li, Z., Wang, Y., Sheahan, J., Jiang, B., Greuter, S., Mueller, F. InsideOut: Towards an Understanding of Designing Playful Experiences with Imaging Capsules. Designing Interactive Systems Conference. DIS 2020. Long paper. ACM. 1-13. Talk videoBEST PAPER HONORABLE MENTION.

Li, Z., Sheahan, J., Wang, Y., Greuter, S., Mueller, F. InsideOut: Playing with Real-time Video Images of the Gastrointestinal Tract via Imaging Capsules. CHI PLAY 2019. Work-in-Progress. ACM.

Talk

Talk at DIS 2020:

Acknowledgements

We thank Kyle Berean and Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh from RMIT’s School of Engineering for giving us plenty of advice. We also thank Patrick Baudisch for inspiration at the beginning of the project. We also thank RMIT’s School of Design and everyone who helped with the video as well as the development and design.