Kristina Höök via Zoom, Professor at KTH

Design beyond the visual: Soma Design (11/03)

Feeling our body and connecting the body and mind

Today, we welcomed Kristina Höök as our guest speaker, who is a professor in interaction design at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm. Continuing the topic of the physical human factors of this week, Kristina shared about “Soma Design”, an approach that goes beyond visual/symbolic imperative, and engages our whole body in the design process.

The Tomb and A Stone

Stone from the tomb at Orkney Island, Scotland by Kristina Höök

Kristina started her lecture with an amazing story of her visit to a tomb in Orkney Island in Scotland. In the tomb which was 5000 years old, she found a tool, made with a stone five thousand years ago. Holding the tool, she could feel the chips that align with the thumb giving a nice grip and imagine how it must have been used at that time. From this story, she brought up the question, from five thousand years from now, how many designs can survive and fascinate a person in that time to nod and say “this makes sense!” Also, how must the tool shape the people’s muscles, nervous system, behaviors, thoughts, and cultures of that time.

Feeling our Body

The class had a time closing their eyes and feeling their bodies with Kristina

Starting our journey into Soma Design, the class had a time feeling their bodies. Closing our eyes, Kristina led the class to concentrate on our body parts one by one. How our body parts belong, how they touch the surface, how they move, and how that movement changes the feelings. Even though we live in our body everyday, we neglect our body parts. Consciously focusing on the body parts and noticing them can lead us to fresh insights into design. For instance, when designing a chair, designers could sit on the chair and carefully feel our flash and bones, and find how the object shapes our emotions and actions.

Breathing Lamp/ Soma Mat by Kristina Höök

Kristina then shared some of the projects where this approach to Soma Design has been integrated. She first shared her experience working with IKEA. The examples included Breathing Lamps which will dim in the same tempo as the user’s breathing and Soma Mat which heats up underneath the user’s different body parts. The designs would guide the attention of the users through feeling their body and its senses. In the research with end-users, the products showed amazing results. The users who have tested the products had soothing experiences and could have positive changes in their lives. For instance, a user of the lighting lamp could increase confidence by applying the breathing experience in stressful settings and a Soma Mat user could overcome insomnia.

Soma Design and its roots

Somaesthetics

Kristina introduced the concept of Somaesthetics by the pragmatist philosopher Richard Shusterman.

Somaesthetics is a word combining ‘soma’ and ‘aesthetics’.

“Soma as a living, purposive, sentient, perceptive body of bodily subjectivity”
Aesthetics as “an awakening from the mindless, joyless behaviours”

- Richard Shusterman

Soma is a way of talking about the body, understanding body, emotion, and thinking as one. Instead of separating body and mind as two different domains, somaesthetics talk about the connection and influences between our body and mind. Therefore, the experience and reflection of the designer itself (us) is important. Unlike other methodologies which sublate the personal engagement of the designer, Soma Design actively encourages designers to observe their own bodies and emotions.

Aesthetics is more of a skill one can train. It is not limited to visual skills but the whole senses of our body. Whatever one engages with, one can focus on each of one’s movements and find joy and meaningfulness from each step. The process is noticing things, appreciating things, and thereby, developing the skill to understand and engage aesthetically. As designers, we should be more sensitive to different materials and interactions in this sense.

Eventually, the goal of Somaesthetics is “living a better life”, getting as much as we can from our everyday lives.

Soma Design Manifesto

According to Kristina, Soma Design is “a process that allows designers to ‘examine’ and improve on connections between sensation, feeling, emotion, subjective understanding and values.” In Soma Design, designers must fully understand the experience by deeply engaging with the product. Kristina introduced the Soma Design Manifesto as follows:

1. We design for living better lives — not for dying
2. We design to move the passions in others and ourselves
3. We are movement, through and through
4. We design with ourselves — through empathy and compassion
5. We design slowly
6. We cultivate our aesthetic appreciation
7. We disrupt the habitual & engage with the familiar

By learning Soma Design and its related concepts, the class was exposed to a new notion of body. Today’s lecture opened up new opportunities to focus on our body and start from our own fully embodied experiences.