Aesthetics of Felt Asymmetry

Paper Title

Aesthetics of Felt Asymmetry

Publication Info

• Topic area: Interaction design focusing on somaesthetic experiences of bodily asymmetry.
• Keywords: Felt asymmetry, soma design, interaction design, aesthetics, bodily difference, somatic exploration, feminist HCI, embodied design, sensory experience, design ethics.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Interaction design often assumes a normative, symmetric body, overlooking the generative potential of bodily asymmetries. Prior work has primarily focused on accommodating asymmetries rather than embracing them as aesthetic resources.
• Significance: Bodily asymmetries are ubiquitous and influence how we interact with technologies. Recognizing asymmetries as aesthetic resources can lead to richer, more inclusive designs that resonate with diverse lived experiences.
• Motivation and related work: Historical narratives have idealized symmetry as beauty and order, marginalizing asymmetry as abnormal or pathological. Third-wave HCI and soma design methods have begun to address bodily diversity, but asymmetry remains underexplored as a generative design concept.

Solution

• Proposed approach: Exploration of felt asymmetries—tacit, somaesthetic experiences of bodily difference—as a design space for interaction design.
• Novelty:
  1. Opening the design space of felt asymmetries, grounded in lived experiences.
  2. Reflections on engaging ethically and generatively with asymmetry in design.
  3. Proposals for cultivating a sensibility to felt asymmetry as a constitutive element of interaction design.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Autobiographical design inquiry by the first author, focusing on scoliosis.
  • Soma design workshop with eight other designers, involving individual inquiries, somatic articulations, and follow-up interviews.
  • Creation of soma sketches—low-fi prototypes and physical interactions to articulate asymmetric experiences.
  • Analysis of diary entries, workshop discussions, and participant reflections to identify aesthetic qualities and design implications.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Felt asymmetries are layered, dynamic, and multifaceted, encompassing spatial, temporal, and relational dimensions.
  • Asymmetries can evoke diverse aesthetic experiences, ranging from discomfort to joy, and can be leveraged as design materials.
  • Soma sketches enabled participants to articulate, share, and explore their asymmetric experiences, fostering empathy and new design insights.
• Advantage over baselines: Unlike prior approaches that treat asymmetry as a flaw to be corrected, this work embraces asymmetry as a generative resource, expanding the aesthetic and experiential possibilities in design.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Participants included nine interaction designers with diverse academic and cultural backgrounds.
  • Methods included individual inquiries, a full-day soma design workshop, and follow-up interviews.
  • Data collection involved diary entries, body maps, soma sketches, and open coding of transcripts.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Limited participant diversity; future work could include broader demographics and non-designers.
  • Ethical considerations around intimacy and potential discomfort in sharing asymmetric experiences.
  • Exploration of temporal and reversible asymmetries in design remains an open area.

Summary

This paper introduces felt asymmetries as a novel design space in interaction design, emphasizing their aesthetic and generative potential. Through autobiographical inquiry and a soma design workshop, the authors demonstrate how bodily asymmetries can be sensitized to, articulated, and shared as sources of creativity and empathy. The findings suggest that asymmetry should be embraced not only as a practical consideration but as a rich aesthetic resource, challenging normative ideals of symmetry in design. Future work could expand the scope of participants and explore reversible and temporal asymmetries in greater depth.