A haptic language design to enhance the transfer of tacit knowledge

Abstract

Collaborations are often transdisciplinary whereby people with different backgrounds need to be able to work together and therefore share knowledge. This means people have to cross knowledge boundaries. Crossing these boundaries can be done with boundary objects that help to transfer knowledge across these boundaries (Carlile, 2002, 2004). Touch can expand the vocabulary that people have at their disposal and therefore contribute to making transferring experiential knowledge and crossing boundaries easier.

To make the research of how touch can be applied to enhance transdisciplinary learning more concrete, a specific context has been chosen, namely the organization ‘Centre of Expertise Societal Innovation’. Within this organization, they want to create learning communities whereby knowledge is shared and preserved between students and others stakeholders in consecutive projects. This has led to the following research questions:

“How to improve the transition between graduation projects within the Urban Innovation program of EMI with a haptic language design to preserve knowledge within the different communities of practice.”

The knowledge that the organization wants to preserve is so-called tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is hard to express in words. Therefore, guidance is needed to help people express their tacit knowledge. From the theory of transdisciplinary learning, it is retrieved that the 7 habits of the mind are important to foster transdisciplinary learning. These habits also include using the senses of the human body. Therefore, it is interesting to combine transdisciplinary learning by expressing tacit knowledge with the senses of the human body. Especially the sense of touch is interesting to use because touch can deepen communication and is one of the most versatile senses.

The literature study in combination with exploratory research on how touch can be used in communication, has resulted in 6 haptic design principles for transdisciplinary learning. These principles can be used by designers that want to create physical haptic designs for transdisciplinary learning. The 6 haptic principles are:

1. Haptic design triggers people to touch it
2. Haptic design makes people conscious of touch
3. Haptic design enables different touch experiences
4. Haptic design translates and adjusts between different disciplines by providing the same meaning for everyone
5. Haptic design evokes interaction between users
6. Haptic design gives people the tools to make their thoughts and ideas tangible

With the principles, a final concept design has been created, called MIMIC. MIMIC is a haptic language design that helps users to express their internal thoughts, ideas, and feelings by providing tools to make these internal thoughts, ideas, and feelings tangible. Translating to external forms will make it easier for others to understand. MIMIC consists out of two sets of cubes, the basic set made of wooden cubes with different weights, and the haptic set of cubes with different materials from 10 categories on each side cubes. Furthermore, a guide, an instruction sheet, and warming-up exercises are created to give guidance to users for sharing relevant knowledge and the use of the haptic language in general.