There 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.

There is currently a wave of research and development of novel on-body technologies and materials, including shape-changing technologies to be worn on or used close to the body. Traditional interaction design methods and interface models are not always a good fit for designing meaningful interactions with these technologies as they primarily interact with our somatic selves—not our language-oriented, symbol-processing ways of being in the world. Design researchers are therefore borrowing ideas and methods from the arts and humanities to design with and help to ”humanize” these technologies. One such approach, originating in pragmatist philosophy, is a design program named soma design. Soma design grounds design processes in our first-person sensuous, subjective experience of the world, aiming to deepen our aesthetic appreciation of ourselves and the world that surrounds us. Soma design has previously mostly addressed gentle, soft experiences. The work,I came to engage in, shifted away from the solely soft and comfortable, and instead addressed borderline uncomfortable, at times uncanny, yet evocative experiences. To shed light on and better articulate those experiences, I turned to monster theories, in particular, using the lens of the monster from the humanities, alongside the impurity concept from social anthropology.

In my work, I define these monstrous experiences as ambiguous experiences, which transgress the seemingly opposing experiential categories of comfort versus discomfort. I did so through designing with technologies that apply restriction, pressure, shape-changing, weight-shifting onto our bodies that introduced ways of alienating us from our own bodily rhythms such as our breathing rhythm. As I argue, monstrous experiences constitute one way of addressing some of the dividing dualistic rifts in interaction design. Through the analysis of my design studies, I show how monstrous experiences help to dissolve the distinction between the inside and the outside of the human body—especially when they come into contact with each other through wearable technology, questioning and bridging the boundaries of where one ends and the other begins. In my design experiments, monster experiences are bordering between the human-like and organic versus the alien and unnatural. Monstrous experiences thus expand the repertoire of soma design, adding more ”radical” design exemplars. They help with ”humanizing” the domain of uncomfortable experiences through providing a different articulation, rooted in literature and art.

My work on monstrous experiences makes two main contributions to design for somatic experiences. First, the monster can serve as an analytical lens that bridges dichotomies such as comfort/discomfort, inside/outside, or leader/follower. It provides another perspective from which such opposing categories, despite their seemingly built-in contradictions, can be united into a coherent whole. Second, monstrous experiences can serve as an estrangement method, a design tool for discovering new ways of connecting with our somatic selves, the world that surrounds us or other people, as well as new ways of using sensors and actuators to address, change, affect or alienate bodily processes. Monstrous experiences can help to explore the space between soft/hard and pleasant/uncomfortable experiences, thus, offering an alternative perspective on ”naturalness” in interaction design.

Vi är mitt i en våg av forskning och utveckling av nya kroppsnära bärbara teknologier och material, inklusive formförändrande teknologier som appliceras på eller nära kroppen. Traditionella metoder för interaktionsdesign och gränssnittsmodeller är inte alltid lämpliga för att utforma meningsfulla interaktioner med dessa teknologier eftersom de primärt interagerar med vårt somatiska jag---inte våra språkorienterade, symbolbearbetande sätt att vara i världen. Designforskare lånar därför idéer och metoder från konst och humaniora för att designa och hjälpa till att ”humanisera” dessa teknologier. Ett sådant tillvägagångssätt, med grund i pragmatistisk filosofi, är ett designprogram som heter soma design. Soma design utgår från designprocesser grundade i individens personliga,  sensuella, subjektiva upplevelser av världen, med syfte att fördjupa vår estetiska uppskattning av oss själva och världen som omger oss. Soma design har tidigare mestadels fokuserat på lugna, stillsamma upplevelser. I mitt arbete valde jag att inte arbeta med mjuka och bekväma upplevelser utan fokuserade istället på upplevelser som gränsar till det obehagliga, ibland märkliga, men samtidigt suggestiva upplevelser. För att förstå och bättre artikulera dessa upplevelser valde jag att använda monster teorier, mer specifikt monster teorier från humaniora, samt det som kallats orena eller förorenade upplevelse i social-antropologin.

I mitt arbete har jag kommit att definiera monstruösa upplevelser som ambiguösa upplevelser som överskrider eller upplöser synbart motsatta kategorier såsom behagliga versus obehagliga upplevelser. Det gör jag genom att designa med teknik på kroppen som begränsar, trycker, ändrar sin form, skapar viktförändringar, eller alienerar oss från våra egna kroppsliga rytmer, såsom vår andningsrytm. Dessa monstruösa erfarenheter utgör ett sätt att hantera några av de problem som uppstår när vi gör alltför skarpa dualistiska åtskillnader i interaktionsdesign. Genom analysen av mina designstudier visar jag hur monstruösa upplevelser hjälper till att upplösa idéer om skillnaden mellan insidan och utsidan av människokroppen -- speciellt när insidan och utsidan kommer i kontakt med varandra genom bärbar teknologi där de i någon mening ifrågasätter och överbryggar gränserna för var insidan slutar och utsidan börjar. I mina designexperiment upplöser monsterupplevelserna  gränserna mellan det mänskliga och organiska versus det främmande och onaturliga. Monstruösa erfarenheter utökar därmed soma design-repertoaren genom att addera fler, mer "radikala", design exempel. De hjälper till att "humanisera" de obekväma upplevelserna genom att tillhandahålla en annan artikulation, rotad i litteratur och konst.

Mitt arbete med monstruösa upplevelser ger två huvudsakliga bidrag till design för somatiska upplevelser. För det första kan monstret fungera som en analytisk lins som överbryggar dikotomier såsom komfort/obehag, insida/utsida, eller ledare/följare. Det ger ett annat perspektiv från vilken sådana motsatta kategorier, trots deras till synes inbyggda motsägelser, kan förenas till en sammanhängande helhet. För det andra kan monstruösa upplevelser fungera som en förfrämlingsmetod, ett designverktyg för att upptäcka nya sätt att få kontakt med  våra somatiska jag, den värld som omger oss eller andra människor, såväl som  nya sätt att använda sensorer och aktuatorer för att adressera, förändra, påverka eller främmandegöra kroppsliga processer. Monstruösa upplevelser kan därmed hjälpa till att utforska utrymmet mellan mjuka/hårda och trevliga/obekväma upplevelser, och därmed erbjuda ett alternativt perspektiv på ”naturlighet" i interaktionsdesign.

Our workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners across disciplines in HCI who share an interest in promoting well-being through tangible interaction. The workshop forms an impassioned response to the worldwide push towards more digital and remote interaction in nearly all domains of our lives in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. One question we raise is: to what extent will measures like remote interaction remain in place post-pandemic, and to what extent these changes may influence future agendas for the design of interactive products and services to support living well? We aim to ensure that the workshop serves as a space for diverse participants to share ideas and engage in cooperative discussions through hands-on activities resulting in the co-creation of a Manifesto to demonstrate the importance of embodied and sensory interaction for supporting well-being in a post-pandemic context. All the workshop materials will be published online on the workshop website and disseminated through ongoing collaboration.

We report on a soma design process, where we designed a novel shape-changing garment-the Soma Corset. The corset integrates sensing and actuation around the torso in tight interaction loops. The design process revealed how boundaries between the garment and the wearer can become blurred, leading to three flavours of cyborg relations. First, through the lens of the monster, we articulate how the wearer can adopt or reject the garment, resulting in either harmonious or disconcerting experiences of touch. Second, it can be experienced as an organic "other"-with its own agency-resulting in uncanny experiences of touch. Through mirroring the wearer's breathing, the garment can also be experienced as a twisted version of one's own body. We suggest that a gradual sensitisation of designers-through soma design and reflection on the emerging human-technology relations-may serve as a pathway for uncovering and articulating novel, machine-like, digital touch experiences.

Deep Pressure Therapy relies on exerting 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) 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.

Though seemingly straightforward and habitual, breathing is acomplex bodily function. Problematising the space of designing forbreathing as a non-habitual act pertaining to diferent bodies orsituations, we conducted a soma design exploration together with aclassical singer. Refecting on how sensors could capture the impactand somatic experience of being sensed led us to develop a newsensing mechanism using shape-change technologies integrated inthe Breathing Shell: a wearable that evokes a reciprocal experienceof “feeling the sensor feeling you” when breathing. We contributewith two design implications: 1) Enabling refections of the somaticimpact of being sensed in tandem with the type of data captured, 2)creating a tactile impact of the sensor data on the body. Both implications aim to deepen one’s understanding of how the whole somarelates to or with biosensors and ultimately leading to designingfor symbiotic experiences between biosensors and bodies.

This paper presents the soma design process of creating Body Electric: A novel interface for the capture and use of biofeedback signals and physiological changes generated in the body by breathing, during singing. This NIME design is grounded in the performer's experience of, and relationship to, their body and their voice. We show that NIME design using principles from soma design can offer creative opportunities in developing novel sensing mechanisms, which can in turn inform composition and further elicit curious engagements between performer and artefact, disrupting notions of performer-led control. As contributions, this work 1) offers an example of NIME design for situated living, feeling, performing bodies, and 2) presents the rich potential of soma design as a path for designing in this context.

Research in the use of ubiquitous technologies, tracking systems and wearables within mental health domains is on the rise. In recent years, affective technologies have gained traction and garnered the interest of interdisciplinary fields as the research on such technologies matured. However, while the role of movement and bodily experience to affective experience is well-established, how to best address movement and engagement beyond measuring cues and signals in technology-driven interactions has been unclear. In a joint industry-academia effort, we aim to remodel how affective technologies can help address body and emotional self-awareness. We present an overview of biosignals that have become standard in low-cost physiological monitoring and show how these can be matched with methods and engagements used by interaction designers skilled in designing for bodily engagement and aesthetic experiences. Taking both strands of work together offers unprecedented design opportunities that inspire further research. Through first-person soma design, an approach that draws upon the designer's felt experience and puts the sentient body at the forefront, we outline a comprehensive work for the creation of novel interactions in the form of couplings that combine biosensing and body feedback modalities of relevance to affective health. These couplings lie within the creation of design toolkits that have the potential to render rich embodied interactions to the designer/user. As a result we introduce the concept of "orchestration". By orchestration, we refer to the design of the overall interaction: coupling sensors to actuation of relevance to the affective experience; initiating and closing the interaction; habituating; helping improve on the users' body awareness and engagement with emotional experiences; soothing, calming, or energising, depending on the affective health condition and the intentions of the designer. Through the creation of a range of prototypes and couplings we elicited requirements on broader orchestration mechanisms. First-person soma design lets researchers look afresh at biosignals that, when experienced through the body, are called to reshape affective technologies with novel ways to interpret biodata, feel it, understand it and reflect upon our bodies.

Previous research on musical embodiment has reported that expert performers often regard their instruments as an extension of their body. Not every digital musical instrument seeks to create a close relationship between body and instrument, but even for the many that do, the design process often focuses heavily on technical and sonic factors, with relatively less attention to the bodily experience of the performer. In this paper we propose soma design as an alternative approach to explore this space. Soma method aims to attune the sensibilities of designers, as well as their experience of their body, and make use of these notions as a resource for creative aesthetic design. We report on a series of workshops exploring the relationship between the body and the guitar with a soma design approach. The workshops resulted in a series of guitar-related artefacts and NIMEs that emerged from the somatic exploration of balance and tension during guitar performance. Lastly we present lessons learned from our research that could inform future Soma-based musical instrument design, and how NIME research may also inform soma design.