Designing for the Body

Dear Colleagues,

Embodied approaches to understanding the interweaving of human cognition, perception, affect, and action in the field of human–computer interactions have been embraced over the past decade. There is now more knowledge and support for the value of body and bodily experiences in interactions with technology. This is as much due to the theoretical and epistemological values informed by disciplines that work directly with the body as a source of knowledge, as to the plethora of sensor technologies enabling new forms of interaction and expression grounded in bodily experience and capabilities. However, translating theoretical understandings of embodiment into practical approaches for design is a challenging task. The same holds for first-person tacit knowledge embedded in the body; a somatic or corporeal literacy that requires active fostering by researchers, designers and the people for whom they ultimately aim to create new or improved ways of living.

The focus of this Special Issue is on the innovations, opportunities and challenges of embodied approaches to design and interaction, which include the investigation of the following topics, but is not limited to:

• What theoretical framings or epistemologies are useful for bridging how we think about the role of the body and how we as designers value, enact and translate these conceptual orientations into the act of designing and the design artefacts produced? For example, phenomenology, Somaesthetics and Eastern conceptions of the connection between the body and mind provide fertile material for embodied design.
• How do new advances in interactive technologies influence how we understand and constitute ‘the human’ and/or ‘the body’, and what implications does this have for what and how we design from an embodied perspective?
• What methods operate from a commitment to embodied or somatic perspectives or knowledge, and what are the distinctive features of these methods? What strategies are effective to materialize these distinctive features in the shape of design knowledge?
• How does bodily experience relate with the affective dimension? And what techniques are available to infuse designs with the often-intangible qualities associated with the felt, bodily experience?
• How and what can we design for physical embodied interaction? Case studies of design research practice, for example, tangible, wearable, or movement-based interactions.
• What forms of documentation of embodied design methods and knowledge can adequately capture the ephemeral in-the-moment or in-the-body aspects of experience, for archiving, sharing and cross-disciplinary collaboration? Alternative modes of documentation are encouraged that transition across and within bodies, communities and various forms of media.

We encourage authors to submit original research articles, case studies, surveys, reviews, theoretical and critical perspectives, and viewpoint articles. Of particular interest are articles that explore from a design perspective the complex issues related to the tension between subjective, felt accounts of experience that are often personal, transient and ephemeral, and external forms of knowledge representation, validation and transfer most commonly accepted, but often inadequate in capturing aspects of experience that may be useful for design.

Dr. Lian Loke
Prof Dr Elise van den Hoven
Dr. Claudia Núñez-Pacheco
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Multimodal Technologies and Interaction is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Embodied design
• Somatic literacy
• Somaesthetics of interaction
• Bodily experience
• Human-computer interaction