Chronic pain is a common condition that people struggle with on daily basis and many strive to find ways to relive their pain. With the development of wearables and smart garments we are now moving from designing an object to be used, to an object to be worn. Technology is an extension of the body and the interaction in itself also becomes part of our body. This development enables different kind of treatments to be implemented in a wearable. Accordingly, this study have investigated if an interactive experience using heat and guided meditation with a wearable can support individuals living with chronic pain, and to what extent the experience can change the perception of pain. The results indicate that an interactive experience including these modalities can have the ability to change perception of pain. The study also suggests implications for design by presenting design qualities that become important in such a design, which resulted in; distraction and immersion, familiarity and practice, personalization and flexibility.

This thesis explores the use of an interactive artifact designed to let friends physically share their experiences with each other in an art exhibition. The device, called “the Lega” is a research prototype designed with an interest in bodily interaction and visitors' interactions in museum environments. The Lega is a handheld device which has an ovoid shape that fits in the palm of a user's hand. By moving and touching the Lega in different ways the users can create tactile traces of their experiences that can be received by their friends.The thesis presents results from a qualitative analysis of material from a user observation conducted with the Lega at the Vårsalongen exhibition at Liljevalchs in the spring 2010. The analysis investigates how the visitors used the Lega in experiencing the art and to express themselves as well as their social behavior around the Lega, and how the Lega became a part of their art hall visit. Findings on different ways that users create an understanding of and finds meaning in an ambiguous artifact are presented, as well as different ways users use the body to establish a relationship with the artifact. Among these findings are those of users inventing a language of movements to express themselves with the Lega and users who mimic art pieces with the Lega.

Due to the large influx of computers in our daily lives, human-computer interaction has become crucially important. For a long time, focusing on what users need has been critical for designing interaction methods. However, new perspective tends to extend this attitude to encompass how human desires, interests, and ambitions can be met and supported. This implies that the way we interact with computers should be revisited. Centralizing human values rather than user needs is of the utmost importance for providing new interaction techniques. These values drive our decisions and actions, and are essential to what makes us human. This motivated us to introduce new interaction methods that will support human values, particularly human well-being. The aim of this thesis is to design new interaction methods that will empower human to have a healthy, intuitive, and pleasurable interaction with tomorrow’s digital world. In order to achieve this aim, this research is concerned with developing theories and techniques for exploring interaction methods beyond keyboard and mouse, utilizing human body. Therefore, this thesis addresses a very fundamental problem, human motion analysis. Technical contributions of this thesis introduce computer vision-based, marker-less systems to estimate and analyze body motion. The main focus of this research work is on head and hand motion analysis due to the fact that they are the most frequently used body parts for interacting with computers. This thesis gives an insight into the technical challenges and provides new perspectives and robust techniques for solving the problem.