Estrangement through SilenceHow can we cultivate deeper attunement to one another, ourselves, and the environment that can, in turn, inform and enrich design? Over the course of four workshops conducted across 1.5 years – primarily outdoors – the authors engaged in prolonged periods of shared silence. This collective silence functioned as an estrangement method, revealing the porous and interdependent boundaries between people and things, mutually constituting one another. We unpack some of the experiential qualities emerging from these experiments and mobilize them for future design processes, including: cultivating multifaceted sensibilities, dynamic modes of noticing and interacting, such as coming together and dispersing, being alone together, and acting or playing in unison; the malleability of silence to specific, orchestrated design activities, such as cooking or designing; and reframing silence, not as an absence, but as a presence – rich with sounds, interactions, and possibilities for engagement. We discuss how to set up temporal and spatial boundaries, alongside boundaries within and between ourselves.2025JFJonas Fritsch et al.Technology Ethics & Critical HCIHuman-Nature Relationships (More-than-Human Design)DIS
Friction in Processual Ethics: Reconfiguring Ethical Relations in Interdisciplinary ResearchFriction -- disagreement and breakdown -- is an omnipresent aspect of conducting interdisciplinary research yet is rarely presented in formal research reporting. We analyse a performance-led research process where professional dancers with different disabilities explored how to improvise with an industrial robot, with the support of an interdisciplinary team of human-computer and human-robot interaction researchers. We focus on one site of friction in our research process; how to dance -- safely -- with robots? By presenting our research process, we exemplify the different ways in which we encountered this friction and how we reconfigured the research process around it. We contribute five ways in which we arrived at a generative ethical outcome, which may be helpful in productively engaging with friction in interdisciplinary collaboration.2025RGRachael Garrett et al.KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Media Technology and Interaction DesignHuman-Robot Collaboration (HRC)Technology Ethics & Critical HCIDance & Body Movement ComputingCHI
In the Moment of Glitch: Engaging with Misalignments in Ethical PracticeGlitches -- moments when technologies do not work as desired -- will become increasingly common as industrially-designed robots move into complex contexts. Taking glitches to be potential sites of critical ethical reflection, we examine a glitch that occurred in the context of a collaborative research project where professional dancers with different disabilities improvised with a robotic arm. Through a first-person account, we analyse how the dancer, the robot, and the rest of the research team enacted ethics in the moment of glitch. Through this analysis, we discovered a deep and implicit ethical misalignment wherein our enactments of ethics in response to the glitch did not align with the values of the project. This prompted a critical re-engagement with our research process through which we forged a dialogue between different ethical perspectives that acted as an invitation to bring us back into ethical alignment with the project's values.2025RGRachael Garrett et al.KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Media Technology and Interaction DesignTechnology Ethics & Critical HCIParticipatory DesignDance & Body Movement ComputingCHI
Who Should Act? Distancing and Vulnerability in Technology Practitioners' Accounts of Ethical ResponsibilityAttending to emotion can shed light on why recognizing an ethical issue and taking responsibility for it can be so demanding. To examine emotions related to taking or not taking responsibility for ethical action, we conducted a semi-structured interview study with 23 individuals working in interaction design and developing AI systems in Scandinavian countries. Through a thematic analysis of how participants attribute ethical responsibility, we identify three ethical stances, that is, discursive approaches to answering the question ‘who should act’: an individualized I-stance (“the responsibility is mine”), a collective we-stance (“the responsibility is ours”), and a distanced they-stance (“the responsibility is someone else’s”). Further, we introduce the concepts of distancing and vulnerability to analyze the emotion work that these three ethical stances place on technology practitioners in situations of low- and high-scale technology development, where they have more or less control over the outcomes of their work. We show how the we- and they-stances let technology practitioners distance themselves from the results of their activity, while the I-stance makes them more vulnerable to emotional and material risks. By illustrating the emotional dimensions involved in recognizing ethical issues and embracing responsibility, our study contributes to the field of Ethics in Practice. We argue that emotions play a pivotal role in technology practitioners’ decision-making process, influencing their choices to either take action or refrain from doing so.2024KPKristina Popova et al.Session 4e: Navigating AI Ethical ChallengesCSCW
Exploring the Somatic Possibilities of Shape Changing Car SeatsThrough a soma design process, we explored how to design a shape-changing car seat as a point of interaction between the car and the driver. We developed a low-fidelity prototyping tool to support this design work and describe our experiences of using this tool in a workshop with a car manufacturer. We share the co-designed patterns that we developed: re-engaging in driving; dis-engaging from driving; saying farewell; and being held while turning. Our analysis contributes design knowledge on how we should design for a car seat to `touch' larger, potentially heavier parts of the body including the back, shoulders, hips, and bottom. The non-habitual experience of shape-changing elements in the driver seat helped pinpoint the link between somatic experience and intelligent rational behaviour in driving tasks. Relevant meaning-making processes arose when the two were aligned, improving on the holistic coming together of driver, car, and the road travelled.2024MBMadeline Balaam et al.In-Vehicle Haptic, Audio & Multimodal FeedbackShape-Changing Interfaces & Soft Robotic MaterialsDIS
How to Train Your Drone - Exploring the Umwelt as a Design Metaphor for Human-drone InteractionHow To Train Your Drone is a novel human-drone interaction that demonstrates the generative potential of a design metaphor: the umwelt. We describe the concept of the umwelt and detail how we applied it to inform our soma design process, creating an interactive space where somatic understandings between human and drone could emerge. The system was deployed for a month into a shared household. We describe how three people explored and shaped the umwelts of their drones, leading to unique and intimate human-drone couplings. We discuss the compatibility of the umwelt to soma design practice and identify future avenues for research inspired by artificial life and evolutionary robotics. As our contribution, we illustrate how the umwelt as a design metaphor, can open up a generative new design space for human-drone interaction.2024JDJoseph La Delfa et al.Drone Interaction & ControlHuman-Nature Relationships (More-than-Human Design)DIS
Articulating Mechanical Sympathy for Somaesthetic Human-Machine RelationsWe present mechanical sympathy as a generative design concept for cultivating somaesthetic relationships with machines and machine-like systems. We identify the qualities of mechanical sympathy using the design case of How to Train your Drone, a unique human-drone research product designed to explore the process by which people discover and co-create the somaesthetic potential of drones. We articulate the qualities -- (i) machine-agency, (ii) oscillations, and (iii) aesthetic pursuits -- by using descriptive and reflective accounts of our design strategies and of our co-creators engaging with the system. We also discuss how each quality can extend soma design research; conceptualizing of appreciative, temporal, and idiosyncratic relationships with machines that can complement technical learning and enrich human-machine interaction. Finally, we ground our concept in a similar selection of works from across the HCI community.2024JDJoseph La Delfa et al.Full-Body Interaction & Embodied InputDrone Interaction & ControlHuman-Nature Relationships (More-than-Human Design)DIS
Boards Hit Back: Reflecting on Martial Arts Practices Through Soma DesignThere is an increasing interest in the HCI community in designing for bodily practices. We report on a soma design process for martial arts and the resulting artifact -- an interactive wooden dummy. Through a detailed account of the design process, we show how it enriched and revamped the bodily practice, but also how it changed the martial arts expert in the design team. Based on a phenomenological account of his experiences, we argue that the estrangement methods in soma design may allow practitioners engaging as soma designers, to cultivate and create new artistic habits fused with thought and feeling, changing themselves and their practice in directions they seek.2023YLYoav Luft et al.KTH Royal Institute of TechnologyFull-Body Interaction & Embodied InputDance & Body Movement ComputingCHI
Felt Ethics: Cultivating Ethical Sensibility in Design PracticeWe theoretically develop the ethical positions implicit in somaesthetic interaction design and, using the case study of a water faucet, illustrate our conceptual understanding of ethical sensibilities in design. We apply four lenses -- the felt self, intercorporeal self, socio-cultural and political self, and entangled self -- to show how our selves and ethical sensibilities are fundamentally constituted by a socially, materially, and technologically entwined world. Further, we show how ethical sensibilities are cultivated in the practice of somaesthetic interaction design. We contribute felt ethics as an approach to cultivating ethical sensibilities in design practice. The felt ethics approach is comprised of (i) a processual cultivation of ethical sensibility through analytical, pragmatic, and practical engagement, (ii) an ongoing critical attentiveness to the limits of our own bodies and lived experiences, and (iii) the rendering visible of our ethical practices as a matter of care.2023RGRachael Garrett et al.KTH Royal Institute of TechnologyTechnology Ethics & Critical HCIHuman-Nature Relationships (More-than-Human Design)CHI
Corsetto: A Kinesthetic Garment for Designing, Composing for, and Experiencing an Intersubjective Haptic VoiceWe present a novel intercorporeal experience – an intersubjective haptic voice. Through an autobiographical design inquiry, based on singing techniques from the classical opera tradition, we created Corsetto, a kinesthetic garment for transferring somatic reminiscents of vocal experience from an expert singer to a listener. We then composed haptic gestures enacted in the Corsetto, emulating upper-body movements of the live singer performing a piece by Morton Feldman named Three Voices. The gestures in the Corsetto added a haptics-based ‘fourth voice’ to the immersive opera performance. Finally, we invited audiences who were asked to wear Corsetto during live performances. Afterwards they engaged in micro-phenomenological interviews. The analysis revealed how the Corsetto managed to bridge inner and outer bodily sensations, creating a feeling of a shared intercorporeal experience, dissolving boundaries between listener, singer and performance. We propose that ‘intersubjective haptics’ can be a generative medium not only for singing performances, but other possible intersubjective experiences.2023OAOzgun Kilic Afsar et al.MIT, KTH Royal Institute of TechnologyHaptic WearablesInteractive Narrative & Immersive StorytellingDance & Body Movement ComputingCHI
Strategies for Fostering a Genuine Feeling of Connection in Technologically Mediated SystemsHuman connection is essential for our personal well-being and a building block for a well-functioning society. There is a prominent interest in the potential of technology for mediating social connection, with a wealth of systems designed to foster the feeling of connection between strangers, friends, and family. By surveying this design landscape we present a transitional definition of mediated genuine connection and nine design strategies embodied within 50 design artifacts: affective self-disclosure, reflection on unity, shared embodied experience, transcendent emotions, embodied metaphors, interpersonal distance, touch, provocations, and play. In addition to drawing on design practice-based knowledge we also identify underlying psychological theories that can inform these strategies. We discuss design considerations pertaining to sensory modalities, vulnerability–comfort trade-offs, consent, situatedness in context, supporting diverse relationships, reciprocity, attention directedness, pursuing generalized knowledge, and questions of ethics. We hope to inspire and enrich designers’ understanding of the possibilities of technology to better support a mediated genuine feeling of connection.2022ESEkaterina R. Stepanova et al.Simon Fraser UniversityAgent Personality & AnthropomorphismSocial & Collaborative VRCHI
Making New Worlds - Transformative Becomings with Soma DesignSoma design is intended to increase our ability to appreciate through all our senses and lead to more meaningful interactions with the world. We contribute a longer-term study of soma design that shows evidence of this promise. Using storytelling approaches we draw on qualitative data from a three-month study of the soma mat and breathing light in four households. We tell stories of people's becomings in the world as they learn of new possibilities for their somas; and as their somas transform. We show how people drew on their somaesthetic experiences with the prototypes to find their way through troubled times; and how through continued engagement some felt compelled to make transformations in how they live their lives. We discuss the implications for the overarching soma design program, focusing on what is required to design for ways of leading a better life.2022ASAnna Ståhl et al.RISE, Research Institutes of SwedenShape-Changing Interfaces & Soft Robotic MaterialsHuman-Nature Relationships (More-than-Human Design)CHI
Vulnerability as an ethical stance in soma design processesWe articulate vulnerability as an ethical stance in soma design processes and discuss the conditions of its emergence. We argue that purposeful vulnerability – an act of taking risk, exposing oneself, and resigning part of one’s autonomy – is a necessary although often neglected part of design, and specifically soma design, which builds on felt experience and stimulates designers to engage with the non-habitual by challenging norms, habitual movements, and social interactions. With the help of ethnography, video analysis, and micro-phenomenological interviews, we document an early design exploration around drones, describing how vulnerability is accomplished in collaboration between members of the design team and the design materials. We (1) define vulnerability as an active ethical stance; (2) make vulnerability visible as a necessary but often neglected part of an exploratory design process; and (3) discuss the conditions of its emergence, demonstrating the importance of deliberating ethics within the design process.2022KPKristina Popova et al.KTH Royal Institute of TechnologyTechnology Ethics & Critical HCIDesign FictionDance & Body Movement ComputingCHI
Articulating Soma Experiences using TrajectoriesIn this paper, we reflect on the applicability of the concept of trajectories to soma design. Soma design is a first-person design method which considers users' subjective somatic or bodily experiences of a design. Due to bodily changes over time, soma experiences are inherently temporal. Current instruments for articulating soma experiences lack the power to express the effects of experiences on the body over time. To address this, we turn to trajectories, a well-known concept in the HCI community, as a way of mapping this aspect of soma experience. By showing trajectories through a range of dimensions, we can articulate individual experiences and differences in those experiences. Through analysis of a set of soma experience designs and a set of temporal dimensions within the experiences, this paper demonstrates how trajectories can provide a practical conceptual framing for articulating the temporal complexity of soma designs.2021PTPaul Tennent et al.University of NottinghamFull-Body Interaction & Embodied InputCHI
Exploring Awareness of Breathing through Deep Touch PressureDeep Pressure Therapy relies on exerting \textit{firm touch} to help individuals with sensory sensitivity. We performed first-person explorations of deep pressure enabled by shape-changing actuation driven by breathing sensing. This revealed a novel design space with rich, evocative, aesthetically interesting interactions that can help increase breathing awareness and appreciation through: (1) applying symmetrical as well as asymmetrical pressure on the torso; (2) using pressure to direct attention to muscles or bone structure involved in different breathing patterns; (3) apply synchronous as well as asynchronous feedback following or opposing the user's breathing rhythm through applying rhythmic pressure. Taken together these explorations led us to design (4) \textit{breathing correspondence interactions} -- a balance point right between leading and following users' breathing patterns by first applying deep pressure -- almost to the point of being unpleasant -- and then releasing in rhythmic flow.2021AJAnnkatrin Jung et al.KTH Royal Institute of TechnologyVibrotactile Feedback & Skin StimulationHand Gesture RecognitionFull-Body Interaction & Embodied InputCHI
From Biodata to SomadataBiosensing technologies are increasingly available as off-the-shelf products, yet for many designers, artists and non-engineers, these technologies remain difficult to design with. Through a soma design stance, we devised a novel approach for exploring qualities in biodata. Our explorative process culminated in the design of three artefacts, coupling biosignals to tangible actuation formats. By making biodata perceivable as sound, in tangible form or directly on the skin, it became possible to link qualities of the measurements to our own somatics — our felt experience of our bodily bioprocesses — as they dynamically unfold, spurring somatically-grounded design discoveries of novel possible interactions. We show that making biodata attainable for a felt experience — or as we frame it: turning biodata into somadata — enables not only first-person encounters, but also supports collaborative design processes as the somadata can be shared and experienced dynamically, right at the moment when we explore design ideas.2020MAMiquel Alfaras et al.PLUX Wireless Biosignals S.A.Full-Body Interaction & Embodied InputBiosensors & Physiological MonitoringCHI
Ethics in Movement: Shaping and Being Shaped in Human-Drone InteractionHow is ethics shaped by the particularities of a design? Through a detailed video analysis, we explore how ethicality is shaped in interaction between a choreographer, a performer and a choir of five drones, performing together on the opera stage. We pinpoint how movements enabled by the human-drone assemblage may limit or liberate artistic expressions vis-à-vis the norms of operatic performance. From a somaesthetics perspective on ethics, we show how the process of crafting rich experiences together with drones can deepen sensory appreciation skills, leading to an increased understanding of underlying somatic drivers and imposed norms. Somatic awareness thereby enables a richer repertoire of movements, expanding the ability to freely choose how to act, and cultivating empathy towards others. This shifts our understanding of ethics in HCI as solely about abstract rules or policies 'out there' to also concern the specifics of how technology informs or dictates movement and experience.2020SESara Eriksson et al.Stockholm UniversityDrone Interaction & ControlTechnology Ethics & Critical HCIDance & Body Movement ComputingCHI
Emotion Work in Experience-Centered DesignExperience Centered Design (ECD) implores us to develop empathic relationships and understanding of participants, to actively work with our senses and emotions within the design process. However, theories of experience-centered design do little to account for emotion work undertaken by design researchers when doing this. As a consequence, how a design researcher's emotions are experienced, navigated and used as part of an ECD process are rarely published. So, while emotion is clearly a tool that we use, we don't share with one another how, why and when it gets used. This has a limiting effect on how we understand design processes, and opportunities for training. Here, we share some of our experiences of working with ECD. We analyse these using Hochschild's framework of emotion work to show how and where this work occurs. We use our analysis to question current ECD practices and provoke debate.2019MBMadeline Balaam et al.KTH Royal Institute of TechnologyParticipatory DesignUser Research Methods (Interviews, Surveys, Observation)CHI
HCI and Affective Health: Taking stock of a decade of studies and charting future research directionsIn the last decade, the number of articles on HCI and health has increased dramatically. We extracted 139 papers on depression, anxiety and bipolar health issues from 10 years of SIGCHI conference proceedings. 72 of these were published in the last two years. A systematic analysis of this growing body of literature revealed that most innovation happens in automated diagnosis, and self-tracking, although there are innovative ideas in tangible interfaces. We noted an overemphasis on data production without consideration of how it leads to fruitful interventions. Moreover, we see a need to promote ethical practices for involvement of people living with affective disorders. Finally, although only 16 studies evaluate technologies in a clinical context, several forms of support and intervention illustrate how rich insights are gained from evaluations with real patients. Our findings highlight potential for growth in the design space of affective health technologies.2019PSPedro Sanches et al.KTH Royal Institute of Technology in StockholmMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesCHI
Daring to Change: Creating a Slower More Sustainable Academic LifeNumerous reports and studies point to increasing performance criteria and workplace stress for academics/researchers. Together with the audience, this panel will explore how we experience this in the HCI community, focussing particularly on what we can do to change this for a slower more sustainable academic culture. The future of good quality HCI research is dependent on happy healthy researchers and reasonable realistic academic processes.2018GFGeraldine Fitzpatrick et al.TU Wien (Vienna University of Technology)Research Ethics & Open ScienceSustainable HCICHI