FDM3520 Soma Design
KTH Royal Institute of Technology
The course can be taken by doctoral students of all research disciplines but aims first and foremost at doctoral students working in Human-Computer Interaction or interaction design.
We are at a watershed moment where our relationship to technology is about to undergo a dramatic and irreversible shift. With the rise of ubiquitous technology, data-driven design and the Internet of Things, our interactions and our interfaces with technology will look radically different in the years ahead, incorporating changes like full body interaction, shape-changing interfaces, wearables and movement tracking apps. These changes offer an enormous opportunity—indeed, a necessity—to reinvent the way we interact with the inanimate world. Once-familiar, everyday objects, from our phones to our vacuums, require novel interaction models – not just typing text on screens, but, increasingly, movement-based, bodily communication. A qualitative shift is required in our design methods, from a predominantly symbolic, language-oriented design stance, to an experiential, felt, aesthetic stance permeating the whole design and use cycle.
A path to such design is introduced here: soma design —a process that allows designers to ‘examine’ and improve on connections between sensation, feeling, emotion, subjective understanding and values. Some design engages with bodily rhythms, touch, proprioception, bodily playfulness, but also with our values, meaning-making processes, emotions, ethics and ways of engaging with the world. Soma design also provides methods for orchestration of the ‘whole’, emptying the digital and physical materials of all their potential, thereby providing fertile grounds for meaning-making and engagement.
This PhD-student course will engage with Soma Design not solely through an analytical engagement. Instead, soma design must also, by necessity, be a pragmatic study of methodologies to improve our functioning and a practical study in which we test those pragmatic methods on ourselves to render experience and design concrete. To really grasp the somaesthetic design experiences introduced here, an active stance is required. The somaesthetic interaction design project demands improving our designerly skills through engaging the whole self in creative activities.
After completing the course, the PhD-student will know how to:
• Perform a soma design process, bringing out design concepts deeply rooted in our somaesthetic appreciation skills
• Have improved somaesthetic skills – empirically as well as theoretically, with and without technology
• Analyse and criticise different examples of soma designs
Reviews
Improve accuracy by rating this course