Getting into someone else's soul: communicating embodied experience

ABSTRACT

The idea of connecting with the sensory realities of others can help us to build empathic ties and to think outside the boundaries of our preconceived ideas. Envisioning these opportunities, this paper introduces a framework with a set of embodied modalities derived from communicating embodied experiences through a prototype for storytelling called SOUL. This prototype was built to transmit some experiential qualities based on a first-person narrative truthfully. Three ways of bodily connecting with the experience of others are here identified as (1) assertion, (2) negotiation or (3) dissension, and described as different ways of generating embodied connections with the prototype. This approach is intended to enrich the value of alterity in HCI, including disagreement and tension in times where the design of one size fits all artefacts appear as the general rule. We conclude that this sensory way of transmitting meaning can be useful for communicating assertive messages.

KEYWORDS:

• HCI
• embodiment
• design
• aesthetic experiences

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Dr. Claudia Núñez-Pacheco is a postdoctoral researcher at the division of Media Technology and Interaction Design at KTH. Her research investigates how bodily ways of knowing can be used as crafting materials for design ideation, evaluation, insight and empathy. In her research journey, Claudia has engaged in a multidisciplinary exploration that merges human–computer interaction (HCI) and design methods with tools from experiential psychology.

Dr Lian Loke is an interaction design researcher and performance artist. She has an established research program of working with somatic practitioners and dancers to inform the design and human experience of body-focused interactive systems. She is Director of the Master of Interaction Design and Electronic Arts program, School of Architecture, Design and Planning, University of Sydney.

Notes

1 Anonymised for review.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica: [Grant Number 72140272].