Reflection through Inner Presence: A Sensitising Concept for Design

Abstract

Although our embodied dimension has been recognised as a generative source of imagination through movement and gesture, the notion of the body as a generator of more symbolic and descriptive expressions of knowledge remains mostly unexplored in human-computer interaction (HCI). This theoretical paper introduces the sensitising concept of reflection through inner presence, in contrast to reflection in action, as a way to differentiate two modes of embodied reflection generating distinct types of materials for design ideation, inspiration, and information. The relevance of this distinction, and the recognition of inner presence in somatic-oriented design, appears as a way to fill the gap of the reported elusiveness in the description of inner experience for design use. Different than design approaches that use reflection in action, reflection through inner presence generates detailed accounts of somatic and aesthetic qualities, which can be potentially incorporated into the design of artefacts.

Tangible Body Maps of Felt-Sensing Experience

“…• Evaluation of our experiences with technologies from an angle that focuses on embodied inner presence [11]. • The emergence of insights -In some cases, participants experience them directly.…”

Soma-Based Nonphysical Instrument Design in Electronic Music Performance

“…A tendency to overlook the direct impressions of the user in favor of designs and frameworks based on the body as an observable presence often leads to the body awareness of the performer becoming externalized [12]. This attention to the artifacts or outcomes of design can exclude valuable, subtle information during the design process [13].…”

Documenting the Elusive and Ephemeral in Embodied Design Ideation Activities

“…It emphasizes the subjective bodily experience of the designer-researcher as the primary focus for interaction and contemplation [44] and as a design tool. The designer-researcher engages with their own body, movement, and "felt emotional experience and sense of aesthetics" [24], letting the EDI feed off their own bodily understanding and experience [24], which is used as a design material [6] and to create and furthering explore potential design ideas [65]. When shared among a designers-researchers' team, this can improve a shared understanding and construction of meaning [24], key to facilitate collaboration and communication.…”

“…When shared among a designers-researchers' team, this can improve a shared understanding and construction of meaning [24], key to facilitate collaboration and communication. Somatic-oriented HCI designer-researchers (e.g., [5,8,24,45,53,55,65,66]) argued that addressing the felt experience in our research-design can lead to achieving more fulfilling somaesthetic experiences [45].…”

“…However, it is widely acknowledged [5,30,45,65,66] that this first-person perspective is usually elusive: it is often tacitly experienced [5]; it is challenging to refer to, and relive; and it eludes language articulations (particularly for people with little or no somatic training [24]). Thus, to effectively transfer, make sense of, and share these first person practices and experiential aspects of them, they need to captured, grounded, and articulated in a systematic manner similar to traditionally done in scientific research, which can be challenging for those without a scientific background [5].…”