Umeå University's logo

This study explores the phenomenon of energy and self-tracking technologies, moving beyond the context of managing chronic conditions. Our approach to designing from the experiences of people with disability is informed by crip theory, which challenges societal norms of health and ability. We analysed 50 survey responses and 15 interviews with wearable tracker users and found that self-tracking shapes interpretation of energy and self-care strategies. Our findings indicate that tracking significantly affect perceptions and judgments of bodily activity, energy and rest. We found a notable disconnect between the metrics provided by the trackers and the subjective understanding of personal energy meanings, especially during events of bodily and contextual changes such as travelling, illness, or menstrual cycle. This research contributes to discourses on energy in self-tracking technologies and advocates for designing more inclusive, crip futures for everyone that celebrate irregularity, fluctuation, and change, accommodating diverse bodily rhythms in energy tracking practices.

There is broad consensus that disciplinary higher education must include artificial intelligence (AI) content tailored to the needs of different domains. Such an approach to higher education will help cultivate the skills, knowledge and critical thinking necessary for the socially beneficial development and integration of AI into the routines, organisations and infrastructures that shape society. Such an approach to higher education further aligns with broader policy and legal recommendations and requirements for upskilling, reskilling, AI literacy and interdisciplinary education to enable individuals to live with, work with, contribute to developing, and navigate AI technologies.

The paper provides insights on how an empirical approach to the pressing question of educating AI broadly in higher education can be rewardingly pursued. We focus on the findings from an interdisciplinary small-scale qualitative study. The study is based on a workshop conducted in 2024 in Uppsala University within the WASP-ED programme – a nation-wide educational and interdisciplinary programme aimed at increasing the capability and capacity of Swedish universities in providing relevant and scalable education in AI.

The aim of the workshop was to lay the ground for the development of course syllabi on AI -focused curricula across disciplines and academic institutions in Swedish higher education. 13 researchers across nine academic institutions participated in the workshop. The researchers, primarily from the social sciences and humanities, are all engaged in interdisciplinary scholarship related to AI.

The paper presents the theoretical grounding of the workshop and its methodological design, and outlines the analytical steps taken to identify major pedagogical principles and topics in AI that could be developed and integrated into educational curricula. The results outline five themes that emerged during the workshop: AI, diversity and human rights; Educating on the foundations of AI; Pushing the boundaries of theories and methodology; Building better AI systems; and Educating professionals within certain disciplines – changing professions.

We compiled the themes into a blueprint of an advanced level 60-credit programme, which could be developed into a 120-credit master’s programme. The programme consists of four modules: Foundations of AI in Society; AI in the Wild; Pushing Boundaries Building better AI; and Thesis. The participants agreed on three pedagogical principles to align the programme content and courses with societal needs: Learning by doing; Real world challenges; Engaging stakeholders. We evaluated the blueprint by mapping it to the WASP-ED AI Curriculum and identified different opportunities to extend the blueprint into a master’s programme.

We suggest that the blueprint can be used by educational institutions to create courses and programmes aimed at developing disciplinary education as well as fostering multidisciplinary understanding of AI in society. Furthemore, we suggest that the methods through which the blueprint was developed offer valuable insights on how interdisciplinary education on AI can be productively developed.

Quantitative representations of the body have become increasingly commonplace, a requisite for many navigating complex health issues, yet also heavily scrutinized under feminist lenses for flattening embodied experiences and perpetuating norms. How might designers and researchers navigate this tension, engaging with quantified (bio)data in corporeal, sensory, collective, and anti-solutionist ways? This 1-day workshop will bring together HCI researchers, practitioners, and designers to solidify the role of design in shaping how we interact with, know, grasp, and enjoy our data, while staying true to critical feminist values. Attendees will be invited to Bring Your/their own (Bio)Datasets (BYOB) as well as any tools or data physicalization crafting techniques they want to employ. The intended outcome of this workshop is a plurality of datasets, data tools, and data representations that empower people to engage with their data in ways other than the ones afforded by screens and dashboards, emphasizing agency, embodiment, and community.

How can we cultivate deeper attunement to one another, ourselves, and the environment that can, in turn, inform and enrich design? Over the course of four workshops conducted across 1.5 years - primarily outdoors - the authors engaged in prolonged periods of shared silence. This collective silence functioned as an estrangement method, revealing the porous and interdependent boundaries between people and things, mutually constituting one another. We unpack some of the experiential qualities emerging from these experiments and mobilize them for future design processes, including: cultivating multifaceted sensibilities, dynamic modes of noticing and interacting, such as coming together and dispersing, being alone together, and acting or playing in unison; the malleability of silence to specific, orchestrated design activities, such as cooking or designing; and reframing silence, not as an absence, but as a presence - rich with sounds, interactions, and possibilities for engagement. We discuss how to set up temporal and spatial boundaries, alongside boundaries within and between ourselves.

The role of our bodies in our meaning-making has been mostly absent in discussions concerning interactions with LLMs. Acknowledging this gap, this paper explores the use of ChatGPT as a tool for somatic introspection towards finding the words that "feel right"to our bodies and emotions. We document our three-month, first-person collaborative process using haiku-making and ChatGPT framed around Gendlin's concept of "felt sense"- a type of ineffable bodily awareness that precedes representational meaning. In uncovering the potential of LLMs to support somatic introspection and self-reflection, we contribute two design qualities, which invite designers to consider (1) Ongoing temporalities -that is, interactions in and beyond the screen and (2) Idiolectic resonance, which considers the complexity of our idiosyncratic language expression. In navigating uncertainty, designing for somatic introspection redirects trust towards our bodies, opening for less data-centric ways of designing for reflection.

This paper critically examines the machine learning (ML) modeling of humans in three case studies of well-being technologies. Through a critical technical approach, it examines how these apps were experienced in daily life (technology in use) to surface breakdowns and to identify the assumptions about the "human"body entrenched in the ML models (technology design). To address these issues, this paper applies agential realism to decenter foundational assumptions, such as body regularity and health/illness binaries, and speculates more inclusive design and ML modeling paths that acknowledge irregularity, human-system entanglements, and uncertain transitions. This work is among the first to explore the implications of decentering theories in computational modeling of human bodies and well-being, offering insights for more inclusive technologies and speculations toward posthuman-centered ML modeling.

Soma design is intimately entangled with the politics, not only of design itself, but of bodies. We combine perspectives from soma design, political theory, and Sara Ahmed’s work The Cultural Politics of Emotions, to develop five political provocations that reflect on the politics of soma design and the possibilities and frictions therein. Inspired by soma design’s roots in somaesthetic philosophy, our five provocations are (i) Knowledge and Ways of Knowing; (ii) The Self and Self-Knowledge; (iii) Felt Ethics and Right Action; (iv) The Pursuit of Happiness; and (v) Justice and the Emotional Labour of Transformation. Our contribution intends to foster reflection on the politics implicit within soma design practice.

Designers’ roles are at a turning point of transforming design from an expert-driven design process within an assumed social and economic order to design practices that advocate design-led societal transition toward more sustainable futures. Design education should be adapted accordingly. Introducing the transition design concept into established design education promotes the sustainable society transition by involving more systems thinking from designers in various sectors. This study reports on a pilot practice and reflection on introducing the transition design concept to design students.