Coding IxD (8) – Expanding:THE BODY

The practice project »Coding IxD« (Informatik x Design) took place for the fifth time in a row at the Cluster of Excellence, this year under the term »Expanding:THE BODY«. The course offer is a cooperation of the working group Human-Centered Computing headed by Prof. Dr. Claudia Müller-Birn (FU Berlin) and the Product Design department headed by Prof. Carola Zwick (weißensee school of art and design berlin). Computer Scientists and Product Designers are trained together in interdisciplinary teams.

The Objective
This time, we foster the conventional approach and emphasize the design for the uniqueness of the human body. Our core objective is to engineer embodied interactions that actively articulate, reflect individual needs, and materialize them (Spiel, 2021). Our mission is to honor the plurality of human bodies and develop a deeper understanding of embodiment as a perception and interaction mode and a design principle (Spiel, 2021).

In this course, we face several challenges:

• We delve into the experiential differences in the lived embodiments of individuals and groups and explore how these unique experiences shape lives differently.
• We raise questions about the data and information that human bodies can provide and how individuals can cultivate skills to become more attentive to their body data.
• We explore how complex and multifaceted body data can be translated into innovative physical artifacts. The challenge is to design and develop novel neo-analog artifacts that use the body as a starting point. These artifacts aim to enhance cognition, communication, learning, and decision-making in everyday contexts (Jansen et al., 2015).

The Team
This semester we are Prof. Dr. Claudia Müller-Birn, head of the Human-Centered Computing department at the FU Berlin, Peter Sörries, weißensee kunsthochschule berlin, and David Leimstädtner, Freie Universität Berlin.