I am very happy to announce that the paper Designerly Ways of Knowing—Soma Design Meets Industrial Design Thinking has been published at the ACM Digital Library. This paper is particularly special not only because it reveals the tensions between soma design practice and industrial design in the wild but also because it derives from Alice Borg’s master’s thesis, which I had the pleasure of supervising.
The publication is available here: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3686169.3686174
Abstract
Soma design processes are known to be slow and thoughtful, demanding personal engagement, authenticity and deep somatic engagements with both ourselves and the interactive materials. What happens when such designerly ways of knowing meet with industrial design thinking? Together with IKEA – a large furniture manufacturer – we collaborated to design for better sleep. Based on years of experience and prior somatic knowledge of designing for body awareness, the academic team staged a progression of somatic experiences for a joint one-day workshop. We contribute to interaction design epistemology by uncovering frictions and alignments between two designerly ways of knowing with distinct identities and values. In particular, we critically reflect on how to approach material choices, somatic cultivation and the notion of solutionism.
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