Laia Turmo Vidal

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

I design, develop, and study technologies to support lived and sensitive experiences of health. My aim is to arrive at alternative ways of inhabiting and relating to our changing bodies, and expand how health is imagined and approached in technology design. My work foregrounds sensory experience, critical disability perspectives and feminist design approaches.

I mainly work with technologies that come close to the body or touch it, including soft robotics and haptics, shape-changing wearables, or closed-loop biofeedback devices. 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 designed and studied auditory and haptic technologies to change body perception.

I hold a PhD and MSc in Human Computer Interaction (Uppsala University, Sweden) and 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 perceive and experiece their bodies.

- Embodied 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 feminist and critical disability perspectives to design, feel free to contact me via email for the possibility of master thesis supervision.