Bodily Awareness: An Exploration in Critical Design

Abstract

There exists a routine in most people's lives wherein they wake, work, and sleep with few activities in between those main moments. During this routine, typical behaviors occur wherein the participants are completely numb to the activities that they are completing each day, they are so used to doing them that they no longer are aware of their movements. Work and everyday life is so typical that people feel the need to exercise to offset their lack of movement, their typical actions. Assuming this situation, we seek to explore how everyday bodily attention and movement can be challenged, and made aware. If there is a possibility that we can make people aware of their full body movements, we can therefore create the tendency for people to become more explorative in their daily lives. We explore concepts of the body-mind disconnect, introduce elements of curiosity and examine unawareness of body. We developed a process of research wherein we conducted initial research observations, a series of low, mid and high fi prototypes, body movement workshops, and cultural probes to examine how people experience bodily awareness.