The Deep Body: Exploring users’ insides through design fiction

Design approaches in the last two decades have shown extensive interest in and developed diverse strategies for taking users’ bodily capabilities and embodied experiences into account both within the design process and in the design outcomes. This workshop focuses on one specific way in which users’ bodies have been characterized and addressed by design practice across such diverse approaches as wearable technologies, design for self-tracking, somadesign, etc.: ‘the deep body.’ In this context, ‘the deep body’ refers to the various manners in which design activities engage with users’ bodies with the consideration that they possess an internal dimension, whether literal or metaphorical, that can be explored through embodied design. Based on this definition, the workshop will actively engage participants in a collaborative exploration of the now and future of ‘deep bodies’ in design. We will utilize presentations, discussions and embodied and speculative ideation and so build a collection of fictional abstracts that outline design approaches and outcomes, and practice-oriented definitions for considering the ‘depth’ of the body.