Available via license: CC BY
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TYPE Editorial
PUBLISHED 23 October 2023
DOI 10.3389/fcomp.2023.1295041
OPEN ACCESS
EDITED AND REVIEWED BY
Roberto Therón,
University of Salamanca, Spain
*CORRESPONDENCE
m. c. schraefel
mc@ecs.soton.ac.uk
RECEIVED 15 September 2023
ACCEPTED 20 September 2023
PUBLISHED 23 October 2023
CITATION
schraefel mc, Jones M, Andres J and
Murnane E (2023) Editorial: Inbodied
interaction. Front. Comput. Sci. 5:1295041.
doi: 10.3389/fcomp.2023.1295041
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©2023 schraefel, Jones, Andres and Murnane.
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Editorial: Inbodied interaction
m. c. schraefel1*, Michael Jones2, Josh Andres3and
Elizabeth Murnane4
1WellthLab, Department of Electronics and Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering and Physical
Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom, 2Computer Science, Brigham
Young University, Provo, UT, United States, 3School of Cybernetics, Australian National University,
Canberra, ACT, Australia, 4Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, United States
KEYWORDS
inbodied, discomfort, adaptive, built environment, CO2, insertable, HRV, breathing
Editorial on the Research Topic
Inbodied interaction
Inbodied interaction takes as its starting point that the body is the locus of constant
adaptation to context. It proposed therefore that by aligning our designs with that awesome
complexity that is our physiological, chemical, electrical, biological selves, we then have done
our best to support our aspirations for our health, wellbeing, engagement in the world. Such
support, as we see in this Research Topic’s paper Discomfort: a new material for interaction
design is not always comfortable, but it is natural, essential for building skills, for thriving,
for being our better selves and societies (schraefel and Jones).
Indeed each of the papers in this Research Topic on Inbodied Interaction are part of an
invitation to explore the following questions:
What happens to our interactive technology when we align our designs with the internal
complexity of the human body’s interconnected, physical, and biological networks first?
When we design to align with our inbodied selves?
That is, can we design technology beyond the interaction component to leverage the
body’s internal complexity as a design resource? These questions are drivers in what we have
called the “Inbodied Interaction” approach to design and engineer interactive systems.
In inbodied interaction we have offered three models in particular to support
that internal, bio-physio-electro-chemical working: these include the Inbodied 5 (In5),
Circumbodied 4 (C4), as well as Tuning, they are outlined in the IX Special Topic on
Inbodied Interaction. They are also detailed in our inbodied interaction online primers.
We particularly encouraged authors to engage with these Inbodied Interaction framings as
design approaches and provocations for their papers.
Our goal in this Frontiers Research Topic has been to foreground such examples of
how an Inbodied Interaction approach can help us fundamentally re-imagine the interactive
technology of work, workplaces, home, education, and play. In particular, we challenge
ourselves to ask: where we focus on the effects of aligning our approach with the inbodied
first, from individual to infrastructure, how does this orientation make it easier for us all to
build both the environments and the knowledge, skills, and practice we need to be healthy,
effective, creative and resilient, not least in harmony with, sustainably with, our planet.
As an example of aligning with the orienting principle of Inbodied Interaction of the body
is site of constant adaptation,Tabor et al. present Comparing heart rate variability biofeedback
and simple paced breathing to inform the design of guided breathing technologies, In this
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schraefel et al. 10.3389/fcomp.2023.1295041
paper, the group considers the benefits of helping people slow
their breathing to achieve a variety of physiological and associated
psychological benefits. In most design cases, we use sensors
to monitor phyiological/biomechanical processes, whether that’s
walking, heart rate and so on. For breathing support, sensors—
often connected to tracking systems—are common. But are they
necessary in this case? The design question explored is: to what
degree do sensor devices differ in effect (specifically achieving
“coherence”) differ from far simpler external guides. In this case,
there is no effect benefit. The results open related inbodied
interaction questions around design continua like outsourcing
to insourcing. Sensor-based designs typically support perpetual
outsourcing of our status to devices to tell us how we are doing;
might lighter weight guides help insource and own better inbodied
awareness to guide ourselves, over time?
A further reflection on the experience of adaptation is explored
in the discomfort work (schraefel and Jones), noted above. Here,
the physiology of discomfort is explored as a necessary inbodied
experience to support positive adaptation. The authors also offer
examples and challenges for HCI design to embrace discomfort,
and especially to help participants prepare for discomfort by
aligning it with the paths for adaptation. Making discomfort
explicit, the authors propose, can help prevent people abandoning
practices that would be beneficial for them—across physical,
emotional, social and cognitive practices that each affect our
inbodied responses.
Inbodied Interaction’s two interacting models of the Inbodied
5 (Move Engage Eat Cogitate Sleep) and the Circumbodied 4
(Gravity Air Microbiome Light) come together in Human factors
affecting ventilation in Australian classrooms during the COVID-19
pandemic: Toward insourcing occupants’ proficiency in ventilation
management (Snow et al.). The paper focuses on the impact of Air
Quality (from the C5) on the ability to Cogitate (from the In5) in
class room environments. It uses Inbodied Interaction approaches,
such as Tuning—to explore building personal knowledge skills and
practice to help insource both inbodied self-awareness and practices
around elevated CO2, and to build responses individuals/groups
can take to address these effects.
The orienting concept of inbodied interaction is that the body
is the site of constant adaptation to context. The focus in this
approach is to align our designs to support optimal adaptation of
our inbodied, complex, dynamic systems. Adaptive human bodies
and adaptive built environments for enriching futures considers
how this approach may be specifically applied to technologically
augmented built environments to better support sustainable,
healthful interactions for human performance (Andres).
A quest embodied within inbodied interaction, as foregrounded
in the above papers, is to help people use devices like sensors,
guides and so on, either minimally or temporarily to help people
enhance and tune their internal sensing and associated practices.
The inbodied 5 themselves are what we call “semi-volitional”
and “non-invasive” ways to interact in a fundamental way with
the body. In Socio-technical context for insertable devices the
authors consider particularly the largely averse response to invasive
devices, framed as “insertables” (Heffernan et al.). This adverse
reaction seems to create substantial opposition to the use insertable
devices, hindering the full realization of the whatever impact
they may eventually have on inbodied interaction. The paper
explores responses to these devices, offering a perspective for
future inbodied interaction considerations of how these devices
may disrupt or align with the “align the design” ethos of
inbodied interaction.
We hope you find these papers inspiring, useful, positively
challenging, and invite you to engage with Inbodied interaction
as an emerging perspective, approach and methodology in HCI
that fosters a deeper bodily literacy to align technology with
the internal complexity of the human body’s interconnected,
physical, biological and planetary networks. Our hope is
that these papers help illuminate how considering, exploring
and applying inbodied understandings to align our designs
is vital in the very literal sense of life-fostering, in our
aspirations to design minimal dose technologies that support
our performance, wellbeing, quality of life. Thank you
for reading.
Author contributions
ms: Conceptualization, Methodology, Project administration,
Writing—original draft, Writing—review and editing. MJ:
Investigation, Project administration, Supervision, Writing—
original draft, Writing—review and editing. JA: Investigation,
Project administration, Writing—original draft, Writing—review
and editing. EM: Project administration, Writing—review
and editing.
Acknowledgments
EPSRC support has been invaluable in bringing together
this Research Topic, across projects that has informed the ideas
developed here. Particular awards include EP/T007656/1 Health
Resilience Interactive Technology: transforming self-management
for individual and community health via inbodied interaction
design EP/K021907/1 ReFresh: Remodeling Building Design
Sustainability from a Human Centered Approach EP/N027299/1
GetAMoveOn:transforming health through enabling mobility.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the
absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be
construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher’s note
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authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated
organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the
reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or
claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or
endorsed by the publisher.
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