Jooyoung Park 80% seminar

Title: Designing with Discomfort: A Feminist Approach towards Intimate Care Technologies

Abstract: In this 80% seminar, I will discuss my dissertation as a research program, designing with discomfort. Positioning it within the HCI and design scholarship on intimate health, I introduce this research program as a feminist praxis of examining and designing care technologies that centre affective, relational, and somatic experience as a legitimate source of knowledge. I draw upon feminist epistemology and critical disability studies to re-conceptualise what we mean by health and dis/ability, proposing more situated understanding intimate body in pain/discomfort. I define ‘discomfort’ as a somatic epistemic site that shares its affinity and distinction between notions of ‘uncertainty’, ‘ambiguity’, ‘trouble’, and ‘disorientation’. I substantiate this argument by introducing five modes of discomfort and illustrating each mode through five projects that I led or contributed to during my PhD studies. I present ways of engaging with each mode of discomfort and design/knowledge outcomes yielded by this process. I will conclude with an open discussion on this dissertation’s potential contributions to feminist HCI, soma design, and intimate care technologies.

Discussant: Shaowen Bardzell