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There is currently a wave of research and development of novel on-body technologies and materials, including shape-changing technologies to be worn on or used close to the body. Traditional interaction design methods and interface models are not always a good fit for designing meaningful interactions with these technologies as they primarily interact with our somatic selves—not our language-oriented, symbol-processing ways of being in the world. Design researchers are therefore borrowing ideas and methods from the arts and humanities to design with and help to ”humanize” these technologies. One such approach, originating in pragmatist philosophy, is a design program named soma design. Soma design grounds design processes in our first-person sensuous, subjective experience of the world, aiming to deepen our aesthetic appreciation of ourselves and the world that surrounds us. Soma design has previously mostly addressed gentle, soft experiences. The work,I came to engage in, shifted away from the solely soft and comfortable, and instead addressed borderline uncomfortable, at times uncanny, yet evocative experiences. To shed light on and better articulate those experiences, I turned to monster theories, in particular, using the lens of the monster from the humanities, alongside the impurity concept from social anthropology. In my work, I define these monstrous experiences as ambiguous experiences, which transgress the seemingly opposing experiential categories of comfort versus discomfort. I did so through designing with technologies that apply restriction, pressure, shape-changing, weight-shifting onto our bodies that introduced ways of alienating us from our own bodily rhythms such as our breathing rhythm. As I argue, monstrous experiences constitute one way of addressing some of the dividing dualistic rifts in interaction design. Through the analysis of my design studies, I show how monstrous experiences help to dissolve the distinction between the inside and the out, Vi är mitt i en våg av forskning och utveckling av nya kroppsnära bärbara teknologier och material, inklusive formförändrande teknologier som appliceras på eller nära kroppen. Traditionella metoder för interaktionsdesign och gränssnittsmodeller är inte alltid lämpliga för att utforma meningsfulla interaktioner med dessa teknologier eftersom de primärt interagerar med vårt somatiska jag---inte våra språkorienterade, symbolbearbetande sätt att vara i världen. Designforskare lånar därför idéer och metoder från konst och humaniora för att designa och hjälpa till att ”humanisera” dessa teknologier. Ett sådant tillvägagångssätt, med grund i pragmatistisk filosofi, är ett designprogram som heter soma design. Soma design utgår från designprocesser grundade i individens personliga, sensuella, subjektiva upplevelser av världen, med syfte att fördjupa vår estetiska uppskattning av oss själva och världen som omger oss. Soma design har tidigare mestadels fokuserat på lugna, stillsamma upplevelser. I mitt arbete valde jag att inte arbeta med mjuka och bekväma upplevelser utan fokuserade istället på upplevelser som gränsar till det obehagliga, ibland märkliga, men samtidigt suggestiva upplevelser. För att förstå och bättre artikulera dessa upplevelser valde jag att använda monster teorier, mer specifikt monster teorier från humaniora, samt det som kallats orena eller förorenade upplevelse i social-antropologin. I mitt arbete har jag kommit att definiera monstruösa upplevelser som ambiguösa upplevelser som överskrider eller upplöser synbart motsatta kategorier såsom behagliga versus obehagliga upplevelser. Det gör jag genom att designa med teknik på kroppen som begränsar, trycker, ändrar sin form, skapar viktförändringar, eller alienerar oss från våra egna kroppsliga rytmer, såsom vår andningsrytm. Dessa monstruösa erfarenheter utgör ett sätt att hantera några av de problem som uppstår när vi gör alltför skarpa dualistiska åtskillnader i interaktionsdesign. Genom analysen av mina, The room for the public defence have been altered, from room D3 to D2.QC 20230516

Biosensing technologies are increasingly available as off-the-shelf products, yet for many designers, artists and non-engineers, these technologies remain difficult to design with. Through a soma design stance, we devised a novel approach for exploring qualities in biodata. Our explorative process culminated in the design of three artefacts, coupling biosignals to tangible actuation formats. By making biodata perceivable as sound, in tangible form or directly on the skin, it became possible to link qualities of the measurements to our own somatics - our felt experience of our bodily bioprocesses - as they dynamically unfold, spurring somatically-grounded design discoveries of novel possible interactions. We show that making biodata attainable for a felt experience - or as we frame it: turning biodata into somadata - enables not only first-person encounters, but also supports collaborative design processes as the somadata can be shared and experienced dynamically, right at the moment when we explore design ideas., QC 20201021, AffecTech: Personal Technologies for Affective Health, Innovative Training Net- work funded by the H2020 People Programme under Marie Skłodowska Curie grant agreement No 722022, Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research project RIT15-0046, Swedish Research council project 2016-04709

A set of prominent designers embarked on a research journey to explore aesthetics in movement-based design. Here we unpack one of the design sensitivities unique to our practice: a strong first person perspective-where the movements, somatics and aesthetic sensibilities of the designer, design researcher and user are at the forefront. We present an annotated portfolio of design exemplars and a brief introduction to some of the design methods and theory we use, together substantiating and explaining the first-person perspective. At the same time, we show how this felt dimension, despite its subjective nature, is what provides rigor and structure to our design research. Our aim is to assist researchers in soma-based design and designers wanting to consider the multiple facets when designing for the aesthetics of movement. The applications span a large field of designs, including slow introspective, contemplative interactions, arts, dance, health applications, games, work applications and many others., QC 20180626