keynotes

Soma Design — designing with the whole body

Kristina Höök

Professor in Interaction Design at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
https://www.kth.se/profile/khook

Soma Design foregrounds the lived body of the designer, involving extensive bodily experience through personal practice. It entails an active stance, inviting us to seek out new bodily practices and, in its application within HCI, new digital technologies to support these. Soma Design therefore encourages us to design for deepening aesthetic appreciation and meaning-making from a position as sentient, subjective selves. Through engaging somatically with the digital and physical materials we design with, their somaesthetic potential is revealed and can be shaped into felt experiences relevant to the design aims.


SoundNudge — Using sound to design behavior through emotion, attention, and action

Daniel Västfjäll

Professor in Cognitive Psychology at Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden
https://liu.se/en/employee/danva85


In this talk, I will present research at the intersection of behavioral science, emotion psychology, and sound design. In recent years, the fields of behavioral decision-making and behavioral public policy have been engaged in how to effectively “nudge” people to change their behaviors towards pro-environmental and pro-social actions. Much of this research has been focused on designing environments that activate various psychological mechanisms and behaviors (“choice architecture”). However, auditory information/sound is an almost completely neglected channel of communication and an underutilized tool to create behavior change. Drawing on the close link between sound, emotion, and actions, I will present a novel framework for Aural Choice Architecture – how sound can be used to engage consumers, create behavior change, and ultimately shift behaviors towards more sustainable and prosocial alternatives. Sound nudges thus have a double meaning –sound (as in auditory information) can foster sound (as in healthy or good) behaviors.