Movement-based design methods have gained increased attention across various research fields and practices, particularly in interaction design. By engaging the body in movement, these methods have the potential to explore a richer, more intuitive, and immersive user experience. A recent project MeCaMinD1 brought together researchers from interaction and sports design to explore, collect, and document movement-based methods and make them practically useful across domains. The methods were explored through a series of workshops, furthering the team's understanding of their use and practical applicability. This understanding was compiled into a set of design cards that we present here. We discuss the experience of using the resulting cards in movement-based design sessions. We found that while the cards are mostly used in designing, planning, and preparing sessions, they also function as support during the design sessions, used by both facilitators and participants. Based on a final ideation session with both novice and experienced facilitators, we sketch ways to support managing the cards during sessions, integrating them with movement and physical action.

This workshop explores how telepresence robots can be used for playful design speculation, leveraging their inherent asymmetries to create engaging and innovative experiences. By focusing on playfulness instead of purely utilitarian applications this workshop seeks to transform the limitations of telepresence robots into opportunities for creative interaction. We wish to explore the ways in which we can exploit the asymmetrical capabilities of remote and local users of telepresence robots. Given the person using the robot will always have more constraints due to the technical limitations of the robot (e.g., limited movement, limited space awareness, etc), we want to investigate if moving away from utilitarian applications towards playfulness can help make these robots more attractive and useful. In this workshop participants will adapt physical games using embodied methods embodied design ideation methods, such as magic machines, embodied sketching, and soma bits, to create playful interventions with robots and to discover new ways to enhance telepresence technology. The focus is on embracing asymmetry to foster innovative, inclusive, and enjoyable interactions.

An emerging space in interface research is wearable devices that closely couple their sensing and actuation abilities. A well-known example is MetaLimbs [39], where sensed movements of the foot are directly mapped to the actuation of supernumerary robotic limbs. These systems are different from wearables focused on sensing, such as fitness trackers, or wearables focused on actuation, such as VR headsets. They are characterized by tight coupling between the user’s action and the resulting digital feedback from the device, in time, space, and mode. The properties of this coupling are critical for the user’s experience, including the user’s sense of agency, body ownership, and experience of the surrounding world. Understanding such systems is an open challenge, which requires knowledge not only of computer science and HCI, but also Psychology, Physiology, Design, Engineering, Cognitive Neuroscience, and Control Theory. This workshop aims to foster discussion between these diverse disciplines and to identify links and synergies in their work, ultimately developing a common understanding of future research directions for systems that intrinsically couple sensing and action.

The design of interactive systems and digital artefacts often makes use of digital or analog sensory data as a way to “capture” human senses and sensory experiences. Yet, designing for and with sensory data is complex because of our unique, embodied ways of making sense of our somatosensory experiences. Sensory data does not have one prescribed meaning for everyone. We propose a one-day Studio at TEI to start a dialogue about work with sensory data and its representation of human sensory experience. Specifically, we propose a guided walk and series of sensory explorations in Bordeaux to contemplate the interplay between first-person somatosensory experiences and streams of site-specific data from various sensors. By walking and noticing together, this Studio invites participants to engage in a process of creative reflection on their felt experiences, their connection to their surroundings, and their stance within or outside the design community.

Oceans, lakes and rivers, dynamic and vital ecosystems, face increasing threats from climate change. To ensure its sustainability, there is an urgent need for technologies that promote responsible and sustainable human-water interactions. Water sports engagement fosters mental and physical health benefits, as well as environmental care when responsible practices are encouraged. Although prior work has investigated how interactive technology can support sports practice to make it sustainable, water sports are less explored due to the unique technical challenges they pose. Hence, there is an opportunity for human-computer interaction (HCI) to explore how interactive technology can be adapted to the dynamic, unpredictable nature of outdoor water sports to foster water conservation and ocean sustainability. We argue that by exploring the design of interactive water sports experiences through a soma design lens, we will better understand the intricate synergy between our bodies and the felt and lived body of water, hence, supporting meaningful body-water interactions. We aim to engage researchers in exploring the potential of soma design in the context of water and water sports guided by preliminary posthumanist water frameworks. The workshop outcomes include a design framework supporting engagement in outdoor water sports to foster sustainability through soma design. Insights from the workshop will be documented in a future academic publication to advance the WaterHCI field.

The body technologies we design profoundly influence our somatic experiences, yet they are often evaluated through short-term or one-off studies. To design for sustained, longer-term engagements, we need to understand how somatic experiences evolve when people repeatedly interact with the same technology over time. With this goal, we report on two in-the-wild studies of body sonification, one with physically inactive individuals and another with professional dancers. For one month, participants used SoniBand, a movement sonification wearable, in their daily lives and shared their experiences with us through questionnaires and in-depth interviews. Drawing from the concept of trajectories, we identified four temporal patterns that characterized the participants’ evolving experience with SoniBand: singular, sustained, deepening, and meandering. We unpack these temporal trajectories and reflect on the characteristics that may contribute to their emergence. Our findings offer insights for studying and designing future technologies that embrace the dynamic, evolving nature of people’s somatic experiences.

Bodily fluids associated with the menstruating body are often disregarded in the design of menstrual-tracking technologies despite their potential to provide valuable knowledge about the menstrual cycle. We prototyped a finger-worn sensor that measures vaginal fluid conductivity, which fluctuates throughout the cycle, and brought it into conversation with people through two speculative workshops (18 people), four fabrication workshops (17 people), and a deployment study where participants brought the sensor into their daily lives (7 people). We unpack that taking a material and sensory approach to intimate tracking nurtures a feminist way of sensing while creating tensions around how we want to know our bodies—tensions around how, where, and when to touch the body, hygiene, data storage, interpretation practices, and labor. With epistemological commitments to feminist materialist and posthuman theory, we invite designers to embrace these tensions.

Machine learning (ML) is increasingly used in healthcare practices, due to its potential to support personalization, diagnostic and prediction, automatization, and increase effectiveness. In physiotherapy, most existing ML solutions suggest replacing the physiotherapist, neglecting the complexity of their skills and practice. We articulate an alternative to the design of ML technology for physiotherapy: one that emphasizes the relational aspects of the practice and offers personalized support to physiotherapists and patients alike. Based on domain studies and design explorations with physiotherapists, interaction designers and ML experts, we present 1) insights on physiotherapy's in-clinic and out-of-clinic looped structure, 2) opportunities and requirements to integrate ML in that loop, and 3) a conceptual interactive ML-based infrastructure that exploits those opportunities. Our work widens current ML developmental aims for physiotherapy, proposing a vision that encodes sustainable sociotechnical relationships in healthcare practices.

Over the past decade, a noticeable increase in literature can be seen in wearable foot interfaces, which have evolved from activity tracking to enhancing human capabilities. Our legs, being the largest body limbs, play an essential role in various functions such as locomotion, maintaining balance, supporting proper posture and providing ground-contact using our feet. Hence, foot augmentations offer the opportunity to augment our entire body. However, most prior research focuses on specific application areas, thus affording a research agenda to further understand the full potential of feet in designing augmentations and to contextualize it in the broader human augmentation space. To achieve this, in this workshop, we invite researchers, designers, and practitioners, novice and expert, interested in designing human and foot augmentations. We will discuss how early foot interfaces helped in augmenting humans, and based on current work and trends in foot augmentation, we will formulate strategies for the next steps and discuss the applicability of such strategies in the broader space of human augmentation.

Historically, paradigms in interaction design have often imposed normative standards, marginalizing diverse bodies and capabilities. As critical works have started to call for acknowledging and catering to a variety of bodies in our designs, we need constructive design knowledge to address body plurality in a productive manner. In this paper, we propose ambiguity as a powerful resource in designing for a plurality of bodies. Drawing on feminist design agendas and on prior work on ambiguity and appropriation, we revisit two design cases in physical activity contexts that accommodated people with varied sensorimotor abilities. We identify four types of ambiguity in those cases (data, information, context, and use) and the interactive qualities they fostered (versatility, adaptability, appropriation) to support a wide range of bodies, capabilities, and needs. We reflect on the benefits of designing with ambiguity and the designer’s role in this approach. Our work contributes design knowledge for addressing body plurality in generative ways, and enriches discussions on the plurality of humanness in interaction design.