Rachael Garrett 80% seminar

Presenter: Rachael Garrett, KTH & Nottingham University

Discussant: Professor Daniela Rosner, Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) at the University of Washington

Supervisors: Kristina Höök, KTH & Airi Lampinen, SU

Abstract:
My thesis explores “felt ethics” as a somatic approach to cultivating ethical sensibilities in interaction design. Drawing on theory from somaesthetics and phenomenology, it articulates how ethics are experienced through the body and enacted in human-machine interactions. Through three case studies – (i) Robots, Dance, Different Bodies, (ii) Embrace Angels, and (iii) How to Train Your Drone – my research demonstrates how felt engagements with robots and drones reveal ethical misalignments, frictions, and possibilities for reconfiguration. The thesis contributes theoretical, methodological, and conceptual insights: it suggests felt ethics as a processual and aesthetic inquiry; offers strategies for engaging with ethical breakdowns and interdisciplinary tensions; and constructs lenses for examining ethical relations between humans and machines. The final case study serves as a design exemplar of “somatic freedoms”: the generative ethical ideals of comprehension, contestation, creation, and cohabitation. These freedoms open space for ethical becoming, experiential meaning-making and ultimately, the cultivation of human-machine ethical relations. My thesis argues that interaction design must expand its ethical practices in order to offer possibilities for embodied, relational, and transformative interactions that support people in shaping their relationships with technology. I propose somatic freedoms as a path towards designing meaningful ethical futures worth wanting.