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Seeing feelingly through the Feet : A Design Space for Microopportunities

The thesis consists of autobiographical soma research-oriented design for bringing somatic attention to the feet by the concept of micro-opportunities embedded in external artifacts to defamiliarize experiences. There is a growing body of work within the HCI community reporting on pressure-sensitive prototypes for raising bodily awareness alongside heat as a positive embodied response. Informed by these, I lead by questioning: How could the feet as the eyes of the body open a space for design estrangement and micro opportunities? Through Research through Design (RtD), I explore where these applications make sense in everyday living. I provide an overview of my somatic explorations within physiotherapy, foot analysis, and physical engagements of materials depicting bodily adjustments, materials, prompts, and objects as tools for estrangement. Lastly, I offer the Soma Design Bodystorming Foot-kit humo encapsulating these insights and drawing on the given premise, seeing feelingly through the feet, to speculate around potential applications and outcomes in everyday living granted by micro-opportunities. Through humo, I provide designers with an open-ended kit for sparking an awakening out of familiar bodily experiences towards somaesthetic (strange) reflections of the being of the feet.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kth-300155
Date January 2021
CreatorsValaszkai, Karolin
PublisherKTH, Skolan för elektroteknik och datavetenskap (EECS)
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
RelationTRITA-EECS-EX ; 2021:302

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