Design and Somatic Sensibilities

Cultivating somatic sensibilities involves heightening our sensory appreciation as a path to devise meaningful multisensory experiences in interaction design. Immersed in an increasingly digitalized and data-cen­tric world, research projects centering on the sensory, embodied, and material reality of our experience, might start losing momentum. On the other hand, the pandemic has also transferred our labs from the public nature of our workshop room to the intimacy of our homes, bringing unexpected benefits and challenges. The articles included in this issue center on the sensory and material experiences of designers, who work with design methods that foreground somatic modes of inquiry and show how these changes could open a door for new opportunities to emphasize the importance of embodied and somatic practices in design and HCI.