Designing Bodily Interactions: The materiality of interaction design from a phenomenological perspective

This dissertation is about Bodily Interaction Design and how designers can work with particular attention to a phenomenological perspective in the design devel-opment process. It is aimed at designers working in the fields of interaction de-sign, human-computer-interaction (HCI), and interactive art.

The work is conducted as programmatic research based on practical work with interactive installations that elicit embodied behavior from a first-person experience of attention to embodiment in the design development pro-cess. The research program is informed by Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, and by materialism. The overall goal is to raise awareness of the fact that the body is an active part of the design process and to present a broader outline of work around the conceptions of bodies within research through design, and to position the bodily view in a material interaction design context.

The dissertation explores and present knowledge contributions about designing bodily interactions from three angles: firstly, Bodily Interaction Design, a bodily per-spective informed by a phenomenological perspective; secondly, phenomenological research through design, a suggested methodology for designers to work within the body perspective; and thirdly, the materiality of bodily interaction design, an unfolding of the materials of the methodology.

The perspective Bodily Interaction Design is a contemporary revised phenomenologi-cal perspective that acknowledges that the designers’ lived bodies play a significant role in design development within a more-than-human view of the body in which bodies are recognized as being multi-faceted and socio-culturally entangled.

The methodology – phenomenological research through design – is a broad umbrella term for the use of the lived body in the design process. Four methodological aspects of phenomenological research through design are suggested: (a) prototyping with the lived body, (b) the interplay between touch and touchback, (c) social interrela-tion, and (d) drifting.

The material contribution presents an unfolding of the materials of bodily interaction design, acknowledging interaction design as a form-giving practice designers can choreograph. It includes a specific focus on the body as material in conjunction with tangible materials and computational material. It is further entangled with half entities and affects and is affected by context, intention, society, politics, and ethics. Additional knowledge contribution includes the model Feedback Loop of Bodi-ly Interaction Design, where the focus is on the constituent relationship between bodi-ly action and bodily impact, thus positioning a phenomenologically informed per-spective to the definitions of materiality in HCI and interaction design as a form-giving practice.

Finally, this work suggests dividing performing phenomenological research through design into the three parts – before, during, and after. This would act as a placeholder of the contributions presented throughout the dissertation as inspira-tions to designers to think through and with the perspective, the methodology, the materiality of Bodily Interaction Design, and the various takeaways presented: as-pects, concepts, and models.