Laia Turmo Vidal

I am a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Interaction Design, working on body-centred technologies, soma design, and health.

My research centers on exploring critical alternatives to designing interactive health technologies. I design, develop and study technologies that aim to improve the embodied, psychoemotional and interdependent dimensions of living with chronic health conditions and altered embodiments. My work foregrounds sensory experience and critical disability perspectives to question dominant health narratives in design that privilege optimisation, compensation and physical restoration alone.

I mainly work with technologies that come close to the body or touch it, including soft and wearable robotics, haptics, shape-changing materials and biofeedback. Through collaborations, I have also worked on XR applications involving somatic experiences.

Previously, I was a postdoc at KTH with a Digital Future’s Fellowship, where I explored soft haptics to support people living with musculoskeletal conditions. Before that, I did a postdoc at i_mBODY Lab at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain), where I worked on sensory technologies to change body perception. I hold a PhD and MSc in Human Computer Interaction (Uppsala University, Sweden), where I worked on biofeedback to improve embodied communication in motor learning contexts. I also hold a BSc in Multimedia Technologies (Polytechnic University of Catalunya, Spain).

Current research

My current research focuses on exploring:

- Touch as interactive modality to improve how people with long-term pain and musculoskeletal conditions perceive and experiece their bodies.

- Ways of articulating, reflecting on, and sharing difficult and sensitive embodied experiences of health.

Are you a Master student at KTH?

If you are interested in interaction design for health, soma design, wearable or on-skin computing, and critical perspectives to design, feel free to contact me via email for the possibility of master thesis supervision.