Beschreibung
by Dr. Ekaterina Stepanova
This presentation will discuss body-centric design approaches to interaction that can support affective, social, and transformative experiences. These approaches foreground the felt, lived body as the primary site of meaning-making, connection, and transformation. Grounded in phenomenological theory and embodied cognition, these approaches challenge the dominant disembodied paradigms in digital systems and instead emphasizes relational, sensory engagement between bodies and with technology.
Through a series of research-through-design projects and art installations, including social VR experiences that explore breathing synchronization, mediated human touch in mixed reality, pseudo-haptics enabled ethereal virtual touch, and dancing with giant inflatable robots, the talk will demonstrate how centering the design process in the felt embodied experience could lead to nuanced observations and generative design outcomes pushing the status quo. Particularly, technology supporting social touch interactions provide an especially fertile space for exploring how felt and relational embodied experience can guide design. We will discuss how social interaction can be reconceptualized as a fundamentally intercorporeal experience, offering alternatives to information-exchange models of mediated touch interaction.
By centering embodied experience, these work reimagine the role of technology in providing aesthetic experiences, and supporting wellbeing, social cohesion, and a deeper sense of interconnectedness with others and the environment.