Kristina Höök – Soma Design: intertwining aesthetics, movement and emotion in design work

We are at a watershed moment: 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 body- and movement-tracking apps. I will discuss how we approach this challenge through Soma Design — a process that allows designers to examine and improve on connections between sensation, feeling, emotion, subjective understanding and values — and their relationships to technology. I will argue that by engaging in a soma design process we can better probe which designs lead to: deepened somatic awareness; social awareness of others in the environment and how they are affected by the human-technology assemblage; enactments of bodily freedoms rather than limitations; making norms explicit; engage with a pluralist feminist position on who we are designing for; aesthetic experience and expression; and, ultimately an aesthetic and ethical position on how to design for being human.

BIO
Kristina Höök is a professor in Interaction Design at the Royal Institute of Technology and also works part-time at RISE. Höök has published numerous journal papers, books and book chapters, and conference papers in highly renowned venues. A frequent keynote speaker, she is known for her work on social navigation, seamfulness, mobile services, affective interaction and lately, designing for bodily engagement in interaction through soma design. Her competence lies mainly in interaction design and user studies helping to form design. She has obtained numerous national and international grants, awards, and fellowships including the Cor Baayen Fellowship by ERCIM (European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics), the INGVAR award, she is an ACM Distinguished Scientist and elected ACM SIGCHI Academy. Höök is a horseback rider, mother, grandmother, and feminist.

October 18 at 13