Button Portraits

Role: Concept, Design, Research, Development

"Button Portraits: Embodying Queer History with Interactive Wearable Artifacts " is a tangible interactive experience that represents queer history using artifacts from the Gender and Sexuality Collection at Georgia State University. The experience tells the stories of queer activists, Lorraine Fontana and Maria Helena Dolan, who influenced and produced Atlanta's patchwork of LGBTQ+ organizations from the mid 1970s to the present, using replicas of the activists’ own buttons as vehicles through which to experience their stories. 

Artifacts

working with the archive

In our design, we chose to focus on primarily physical artifacts, specifically wearables in the collection, as our research question centered around applying queer methods to wearable tangible narrative design. Out of the wearable objects in the collection, buttons and pins (below) were not only commonly collected amongst several of the activists, but they also revealed rich stories of their lives through their visual and textual links to social causes, identification, events, and locations.

Buttons also lent themselves to wearable tangible interaction, as they could be easily pinned to clothing, as well as physically handled, while eliciting the intimacy of a worn experience. Dolan and Fontana’s buttons themselves had originated from an array of sources throughout their lives and spanned themes of activism, identity, activities, political causes, events, and locations among many others. 

Photographs of selected buttons and pins from the Maria Helena Dolan papers, Lorraine Fontana papers, and M. Charlene Ball papers, in the Gender & Sexuality Collection at Georgia State University. 

Photograph of "March on Washington for Lesbian & Gay Rights" button, as part of the Maria Helena Dolan papers in the Gender & Sexuality Collection at Georgia State University. 

Oral History Themes

thematic affinity mapping

As we listened to oral histories from Dolan and Fontana, we chose buttons from the collection that represented themes discussed in their autobiographical accounts, creating thematic affinity maps, such as the one pictured below. We applied these thematic affinity maps to identify and pair artifacts to story snippets for use in the final experience. We actively resisted creating a linear story or guided narrative structure from the collection of buttons and oral histories, as is traditionally done in museum exhibitions. Instead, in our design, the effect of nonlinearly discovering stories from the artifacts is meant to parallel both the messy entanglements of archival practice and of queer stories and relationships.

Creating a thematic affinity map associated with the buttons in the collection.

Experience Design

tangible interaction design

For the interaction, we created a wearable audio player device, influenced by the form and functionality of museum audio guides, which contains a Raspberry Pi and NFC reader (see below). For the interaction, a participant places the audio guide around their neck, wears headphones for increased intimacy, and magnetically attaches a button (mimicking the act of wearing a button), containing a unique NFC tag, to the audio guide, which rests at approximately chest level.

Placing the button on the audio guide allows it to read the unique NFC identifier attached to the button, which then causes the audio guide to play the corresponding fragment of oral history. Each button is mapped to a unique fragment and narrative piece, so the story is experienced entirely nonlinearly: a participant can choose any given button, in any order, and listen to the corresponding anecdote.

Crafting the wearable audio player and designing its technical components.

Designing button replicas and prototyping a wearable audio experience.

Matching buttons to oral histories and creating informational cards with added historical context.

A participant experiences “Button Portraits” by placing a tangible archival button on a wearable audio device that plays a corresponding fragment of oral history. Participants described how this interaction prompts reflection, feelings of embodied intimacy, and evokes complex, queer relationships between the wearer and the activist recounting their story.

User Study

sharing with participants

In our study of “Button Portraits,” we explored how our tangible wearable experience contributes to affective, personal reflections on queer history. To do so, we invited seventeen participants to individually experience “Button Portraits.” The lead author introduced them to the study, followed consent procedures, and invited them to interact with the wearable audio player, buttons, and informational cards. Participants then had quiet time to experience “Button Portraits,” while the lead author observed their interactions and answered any clarifying questions. Following this, the lead author conducted semi-structured interviews, asking participants to reflect on their experience.

A participant sifts through buttons and informational cards as one would look through personal archives, choosing one and pinning it to the wearable audio player near their heart in an act of intimate, embodied reflection on history.

A participant uses the wearable audio player to listen to an oral history corresponding to the “Gay and Proud” button, a piece of which is included in the callout quote. The participant places the player around their neck, donning headphones for increased intimacy, and can peruse archival photographs and contextual information, evoking the sensation of sifting through the archive.

A participant interacts with “Button Portraits” at an art gallery that functions as a local queer community space. Conducting our study there provided opportunities for participants to reflect on their contemporary queer context while interacting with and listening to queer historical materials.  

A participant interacts with buttons and informational cards, picking up the button marked "Blatant" to listen to a corresponding fragment of oral history.

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