Designing Nigiwai with Clauses: Embodiment via Tangible Communication on Three-Dimensional Cognitive Structures

Kaira Sekiguchi, Yukio Ohsawa, Sae Kondo

Keywords: Nigiwai design, diversity, clause representation, tangible design communication method

TL;DR: We appreciate Prof. Pat Langley, founder of AI as science for scientific discoveries, for introducing us ACS to be potentially relevant to the cognition of Nigiwai - a Japanese concept embracing an essential role for prosperous societies and economy.

Abstract: Designing Nigiwai places is essential to our everyday lives and business activities. The Japanese concept “Nigiwai” does not simply mean crowdedness, but refers to environments that enable diversity of visitors, comfort, and opportunities for discovery and exchange. We frame Nigiwai as a cognitive systems problem in which designed situations support diverse individual contexts and goals. To represent this, we model scenarios as disjunctions of clauses linking goals, situations, and contexts, supporting relaxed abductive inference from observed actions to plausible contexts. As an effective means of working with such clauses, we propose a physical-digital hybrid three-dimensional (PD3D) method that combines BaleeGraph visualization with tangible hierarchical flags and color-coded links. In a workshop with sixteen participants, twenty-one clause-grounded flags were created, making visible the diversity of situations and goals across system, interaction, and ethics levels. Subsequent discussions externalized hidden contexts behind these goals, demonstrating how the method supports shared understanding. Together, the clause representation and PD3D establish a practical foundation for constructing and analyzing Nigiwai structures, providing a basis for future studies with broader participation.

Paper Track: Commentary

Submission Number: 62