The body as starting point: Exploring inside and around body boundaries for body-centric computing design

Abstract

More HCI designs and devices are embracing what is being dubbed “body centric computing,” where designs both deliberately engage the body as the locus of interest, whether to move the body into play or relaxation, or to track and monitor its performance, or to use it as a surface for interaction. Most HCI researchers are engaging in these designs, however, with little direct knowledge of how the body itself works either as a set of complex internal systems or as sets of internal and external systems that interact dynamically. The science of how our body interacts with the microbiome around us also increasingly demonstrates that our presumed boundaries between what is inside and outside us may be misleading if not considered harmful. Developing both (1) introductory knowledge and (2) design practice of how these in-bodied and circum-bodied systems work with our understanding of the em-bodied self, and how this gnosis/praxis may lead to innovative new body-centric computing designs is the topic of this workshop.