Developing Somatic Sensibilities For Practices Of Discernment In Interaction Design

The recent turn in the field of human-computer interaction to design and the aesthetics of interaction has generated a renewed focus on the body as the fundamental site of experience. Interaction design researchers and educators are exploring how to design for the felt dimension of interactions with computing technologies, anchored in the sensing and feeling capacities of the lived body. An expanded view of aesthetics beyond the visual has led to calls for approaches that foster a somatic literacy for interaction design. Our focus in this article centers on the importance of incorporating somatic sensitization in design pedagogy, toward a more holistic approach taking advantage of the sapient capacities of the body as a tool for meaning-articulation. Through the presentation of our case involving a workshop comparing the notions of tactile sensing and felt-sensing, we discuss our strategies for including a somatic learning process in design education, particularly in the context of design evaluation and creativity. We discuss some of the challenges we have experienced in facilitating and developing somatic sensibilities for practices of discernment in the evaluation of the qualities of designed interactive technologies.