Entangled Weathers: A Noticing TacticThis pictorial introduces entangled weathers, a noticing tactic that poetically examines the interplay between our internal states and external weather. By drawing from the feminist concept of weathering and the introspective practice of noticing the weather inside, this work highlights how bodies are situated in a dynamic overlap between nature, culture, space, and time. Anchored in stories grounded in the author's design practice, this pictorial illustrates how cultivating sensibilities towards the weather brings several actionable viewpoints to notice, including (1) measuring and mapping, (2) uncovering space and time reflections, (3) weathering narratives, (4) metaphorising and (5) surrendering control. This work invites design researchers to reflect on their own weathers and emerging themes, connecting with sensuous knowledge central to more-than-human design.2025CNClaudia Núñez-PachecoTechnology Ethics & Critical HCIHuman-Nature Relationships (More-than-Human Design)C&C
Searching for the Words that "Feel Right": Resonating with our Bodies and Felt Senses Through Haiku and LLMsThe role of our bodies in our meaning-making has been mostly absent in discussions concerning interactions with LLMs. Acknowledging this gap, this paper explores the use of ChatGPT as a tool for somatic introspection towards finding the words that "feel right" to our bodies and emotions. We document our three-month, first-person collaborative process using haiku-making and ChatGPT framed around Gendlin's concept of "felt sense" —a type of ineffable bodily awareness that precedes representational meaning. In uncovering the potential of LLMs to support somatic introspection and self-reflection, we contribute two design qualities, which invite designers to consider (1) Ongoing temporalities -that is, interactions in and beyond the screen and (2) Idiolectic resonance, which considers the complexity of our idiosyncratic language expression. In navigating uncertainty, designing for somatic introspection redirects trust towards our bodies, opening for less data-centric ways of designing for reflection.2025CNClaudia Núñez-Pacheco et al.Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) & NeurofeedbackGenerative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)Human-LLM CollaborationDIS
(Un)-blanketing Indigenous Climate Change Indicators for Understanding Local Climate Change We (local researchers, Indigenous communities, local stakeholders, and a researcher bridging the places) have worked together over the last two years, in the project Indigenous Climate Observatories, local knowledge for local action to define such observatories, what they become when practiced and what this could mean. They focus on understanding climate change from local perspectives. Each of the explorations started with a blanket, used as a design seed to facilitate a meeting space. They all resulted in a blanket which can be seen as manifestations of each of the different Indigenous Climate Observatories, a boundary object. This pictorial presents the blankets, how they were made, and their role in the process. The blankets were of great importance to ‘work knowledges together’ [41]. By doing this weaving of knowledges, we accept diverse forms of knowledge systems as equitable and respectfully learn together to understand climate change through a multitude of perspectives.2025LRLizette Reitsma et al.Climate Change Communication ToolsHuman-Nature Relationships (More-than-Human Design)DIS
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
Identifying Critical Points of Departure for the Design of Self-Fashioning TechnologiesDesigning technologies that clothe, adorn, or are otherwise placed on the body raises questions concerning the role they will play in dressing ourselves. We situate self-fashioning – or the process through which we stylise and present our bodies – as a complex practice where a series of social, material, and contextual factors shape how we present ourselves. Informed by reflective discussions and projective design tools, we contribute three critical points of departure for self-fashioning technologies: (i) Purposeful examining discomfort as an ongoing phenomenon, (ii) Supporting mimesis and visibility as qualities to be negotiated, and (iii) Envisioning the multiplicity of the body. We call for the design community to help devise fashionable technologies that are sensitive, caring, and responsive to the complexities of fashioning our bodies.2025RCRebeca Blanco Cardozo et al.KTH Royal Institute of TechnologyHaptic WearablesInclusive DesignCHI
Exploring Kolam As An Ecofeminist Computational Art PracticeIn this pictorial, we present Kolam, a visual artform originating in Tamilnadu, South India, as an ecofeminist computational art practice. We provide a visual documentation of Kolam’s Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) through eight characteristics based on existing research and authors’ personal experiences as Kolam practitioners. We begin by framing Kolam as an ecofeminist practice, highlighting cultural and ecological characteristics of Kolam as a Tamil tradition. We then illustrate evolving hybrid multimedia and contemporary technological practices that characterize Kolam as computational art. Our aim is to present a cohesive and compelling visual narrative using the artwork of authors and four contemporary Kolam practitioners to inspire creativity and highlight challenges for relational knowledge production in design and Human-Computer nteraction (HCI) research.2022GKGopinaath Kannabiran et al.Creative Coding & Computational ArtHuman-Nature Relationships (More-than-Human Design)Digital Art Installations & Interactive PerformanceC&C
Drawing Conversations Mediated by AIIn this pictorial paper, we present a series of drawing conversations held between two humans, mediated by computational GAN models. We consider how this creative collaboration is affected by the hybrid inclusion of more-than-human participants in the form of watercolour and artificial intelligence. Our drawing experiments were an extension of our search for new ways of seeing and telling, which includes a reflection of the extent to which more-than-human elements took part in our creative process. We discuss our tendencies to form strange interpretations and assign meaning to the unpredictable and ambiguous spaces we created with them. We further speculate on the characteristic material agencies they revealed in our interactions with them. Finally, we contend how such collaborations are already and always embedded and embodied in our ways of seeing and knowing in design and creativity research.2022PYPaulina Yurman et al.Generative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)3D Modeling & AnimationDigital Art Installations & Interactive PerformanceC&C
Restraints as a Mechanic for Bodily PlayThis paper presents restraints - directly imposed restrictions on players' bodily movements, as a mechanic for bodily play in HCI. While this is a familiar mechanic in non-digital movement-based games, its potential in designing bodily play experiences in HCI has been scarcely explored. Three types of restraints observed in non-digital movement-based games, are explored here: fixating body parts, excluding body parts and depriving/manipulating bodily senses. Then, we investigate the experiential dynamics of restraints as a bodily play mechanic bridging a phenomenological perspective on bodily movement with theories on play. These investigations form the theoretical framework for the subsequent analysis of five digital body game examples. Building on this analysis and theoretical framework, we formulate five design strategies for implementing restraints as a mechanic for bodily play in HCI. We propose restraints as a generative resource for researchers and designers interested in understanding and designing bodily play experiences in HCI.2021LMLouise Petersen Matjeka et al.Norwegian University of Science and TechnologyVibrotactile Feedback & Skin StimulationFull-Body Interaction & Embodied InputFoot & Wrist InteractionCHI
Synthesis of Forms: Integrating Practical and Reflective Qualities in DesignSynthesis, or the integration of hitherto separated elements, is a prominent concept in theories of design processes. Synthesis often happens when there is a need to make a decision, though it is often the result of a combination of different alternatives, instead of deciding in favor of one and eliminating another. In many design studies, synthesis has been investigated in the contexts of everyday design—bicycle frames, sewing machines, commercial architecture. We were interested in how it might apply in contexts of reflective design, whose pragmatics often depend on different interrelationships between users and technological products. In this paper, we argue that designing everyday use objects for reflection requires a synthesis of two apparently opposite forms: conventionally practical forms, since they are everyday use objects, and evocative forms, since they make users think. We provide two examples of everyday objects for reflection that we believe synthesize both conventionally practical and evocative forms, analyzing the design processes that led to these forms, and discussing how these reflective designs embody different forms of synthesis.2021MGMaliheh Ghajargar et al.Malmö University, Malmö UniversityInclusive DesignDesign FictionCHI
Tracing Conceptions of the Body in HCI: From User to More-Than-HumanThis paper traces different conceptions of the body in HCI and identifies a narrative from user to body, body to bodies, and bodies to more-than-human bodies. Firstly, this paper aims to present a broader, updated, survey of work around the body in HCI. The overview shows how bodies are conceptualized as performative, sensing, datafied, intersectional and more-than-human. This paper then diverges from similar surveys of research addressing the body in HCI in that it is more disruptive and offers a critique of these approaches and pointers for where HCI might go next. We end our paper with recommendations drawn from across the different approaches to the body in HCI. In particular, that researchers working with the body have much to gain from the 4th wave HCI approach when designing with and for the body, where our relationships with technologies are understood as entangled and the body is always more-than-human.2021SHSarah Homewood et al.IT University of CopenhagenFull-Body Interaction & Embodied InputHuman-Nature Relationships (More-than-Human Design)CHI