Mind the gap: The 4M Bridge Between 4E-Cognition and Movement-Based Design

Abstract

Along with technology trends like extended reality, wearables, IoT, and exergames, new design approaches have emerged, focusing on full-body interactions by actively working with the lived body’s capacity to sense, feel, and create. Thus, designers are recommended to use movement as part of the design activity when designing for and of movement, regardless of the targeted application domain. However, designing for bodily experiences is challenging. We have identified a gap of no movement-based design framework available, including the moving body as the centre part and core material of the design processes. We recognise the human body is more than a physical object in the world, but a feeling, perceptualising body, that creates meaning in interaction with the environment. It thus frustrates and challenges us to reach a bodily grounded design process embracing the lived body. A common framework informed by the theoretical aspect of embodied cognition and the practical element of movement design can be a starting point for embodied design research. Recognising these challenges, we see a need for creating a bridge between practice and theory. Based on the bridging concept from Dalsgaard and Dindler, this paper presents a movement-based design framework to bridge the abstract idea of embodied cognition theory with the 4E perspectives of embodied, embedded, enactive and extended and concrete movement-based design practices. We created a movement-based design framework structuring the movement-based methods of different perspectives. The 4M model we propose contains three types of facilitator-mediated methods: 1) Mood-setters stimulating a creative body being, 2) Movement-based design methods for creating immersion in creative bodily activities, and 3) Movement concepts as knowledge and evidence for developing and validating movement artefacts. Besides the facilitator cards, the participants have access to Modifiers that can be used in conjunction with the other methods as creative inspiration for exploring, trying, or performing new movement possibilities.

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