Designing for Humans of Earth
Inbodied Interaction Design is fundamentally oriented around the mantra “align the design.” Align the design, that is, with our inbodied selves – our wiring.
Inbodied (not to be confused with embodied) is shorthand for our physical selves – our physiological, neurological, biological, electro-chemical HUMAN selves. That latter noun “human” is important to stress, to unpack – to consider.
Human here means we are creatures of earth. What does “of earth” mean – in particular for design considerations – not least of design for interactive systems?
We are fundamentally, completely, ineluctably deeply part of the earth ecosystem.
This framing doesn’t mean we are “connected” to earth – like we have a relationship to it – and that relationship could therefore be broken or changed. We mean we are OF earth – part of earth. Getting away from that of-ness is always going to be artificial. I’m not judging that artificial-natural continuum – i’m just saying – as we’ll see in a moment – that that’s a fact. We deal with that fact every day.
In inbodied interaction, we foreground this more-than-connection of earthness in a couple of models for understanding our human-ness and our of earthness. ANd its these two models that let us also consider and evaluate the aligned-ness of our designs with this human/earth-ness. We call these models the inbodied five and the circumbodied four – or in5 and c4.
Inbodied 5 – In inbodied interaction’s Inbodied 5 (in5), we note that there are 5 interactions that are “semi-volitional.” That is, we MUST have these properties to thrive and be healthful; lack of them is deadly. THese are Move Engage Eat Cogitate and Sleep. I rationalise why these five elsewhere but for now, let’s just agree for the moment this is so.
Circumbodied 4 Likewise the in the circumbodied four (C4) are Gravity Air Microbiome Light (GAML). These surround or interact directly with every cell in our body in a variety of ways.
Examples of Earth-Owning Interaction – Consider earthly gravity: as mammals, gravity informs all our organ systems but we can focus on two for the moment: articulated joints and skeletal muscles – as components of the larger joint and muscle systems.
Our locomotion in the earth gravity environment lets us move against that force – standing on the earth, walking – all require gravity to enable the types of movements that expresses human-ness. Our skeletons are evolved to walk and run upright, with gravity.
Consider Air – our cells depend on the gasses in air to operate, to burn fuel to support metabolic processes.
In contrast, we are not creatures of space: joints/muscles as per our skeletons are useless for locomotion in zero g.
There is no air in space or in the atmosphere – such as it may be – of other planets in our solar system alone. Our life systems are not evolved to survive, replicate, thrive without these gasses – just like other systems on our home world.
In5-C4 Interaction aligned Interaction Designs
Thus, as creatures of earth we MOVE. We have also evolved to thrive by ENGAGING with others – no human operates on our own. We are born into a social context; we are physiologically wired for managing our energy requirements – our social allostasis – with each other. Digital interaction bias has been effectively weakening our in-the-real practices with each other, just as sedentarism affects our fitness of our organ systems of muscle bone heart lungs nerves/brain.
We move together to gain the materials we need for fuel and metabolism – to EAT – social interaction – engagement – around food is in fact part of our ancient hundreds of thousands of years of operating together as humans.
In the c4 – that eating is supported not least by the microbiota of the environment that bridges to us, brings us within the environment via co-existence on our skin, in our gut our mouths – our bodies.
We have evolved with this bacteria such that it helps translate interaction with the environment into nutrients, into states that signal mental and physical well being, that run communications between gut & brain. That affect our cognate states.
Our integumentary system – not least our largest organ – our skin – is not a barrier per se- but a boundary for such interactions of exogenous/endogenous navigations, flows – we are invariably, allostatically, constantly connected with earth, of earth.
Thus in in5, We COGITATE – we can think deeply, broadly – and we can be still and aware critically for the salience of signals around us. The plasticity of our brains is evolved for this regualr re-consideration, and processing of information. IT thus requires play, exploration, collaboration of new ideas, refining practices, constantly challenging ourselves to stay flexible, resilient – like the mix of fats in our foods to help our cells remain flexible to manage demands we put on our selves and recover.
To build in these experiences, these understandings of our bodies – including our brains and our learnings and motor learnings and traumas and insights
We sleep – most of us not enough – but we must sleep to recover, rebuild, to remember, to integrate to repair and to relax and consolidate our interactions with each other, ourselves, the planet.
To come back to the C4 – that SLEEP of the in5 is part of our alignment with the EARTH’s light/dark cycle. Thus We are wired to the earth and we are TUNED to the earth. Every cell in our bodies is tuned to the circadian rhythm of the light and of the dark. Via the light in our eyes, wavelengths coming through our atmosphere, to the timing of the food we eat, all these interactions affect our alignment of our systems to themselves, and these to the world – aligning our inbodied with our circumbodied earthliness lets us thrive.
TUNING We are, as humans of earth, constantly ADAPTING to our CONTEXTS. Our capacity to maintain positive adaptations across contexts is our resilience. Part of our mission which the inbodied interaction’s approach enables is to help us align our designs – our technologies or as Ursala Franklin describes technology – our Way of Doing – to support our humanity to thrive. In inbodied interaction we talk about this adaptive resilience as learning how to TUNE the in5/c4 to enable us to FEEL better how we FEEL better.
Discomfort is a material
A last note here that : feeling better isn’t necessarily feeling super at every moment. Positive adaptation – disturbing the conservation of energy and needing to spend fuel to change current state- is not necessarily comfortable. But to go through that discomfort – the dose of discomfort for adaptation – is part of our resilience, our tuning. We posit discomfort as a material for our designs – for our Ways of Doing – for adaptive resilience.
Potential
To be aligned, to be fully human – we have so much under-explored potential. Do our technologies inhibit or enhance that potential? Do our designs align to build or block that potential? All systems affect all systems – do we privilege one and suppress others? How many of us ever achieve our potentials and how much of that is down to the design of our contexts?
Ways of Tuning for Resilience – Align the Design with the in5/c4 of Earth
And so we can ask the question
What does our technology do? WE might ask how is that WAY embodied? And essentially both these questions invite is to ask:
Does our technology take us out of our alignment with being creatures of earth? Does it take us away from aligning with the C4 via the in5?
If we are considering new technology – our question might be – what is the WAY we wish to re-align with the C4 and in5? where do we need to do this better? From there we may consider embodiments of those ways – instantiating technologies
Simple example: how does our interaction with sleep and eat align with the light/dark cycle of where we are on the planet? How does our movement keep us working to thrive in gravity. How does our environment – and our engagement with it and each other and our food facilitate healthful microbiota interactions? How well balanced is the air we all share in our contexts?
Human Inbodied Interaction: Every system engages with & affects every system. These simple checks of in5-c4 interactions can help us check are our designs aligned with how we thrive?
Since sedentarism reduces interacting with gravity as one example – we might predict – even without the buckets of research evidence we have – that that’s not a well-aligned design for thriving daily. We can go through the rest of the list such as Lack of sleep, poor air, low nutrient dense foods, overly sterile environments, lack of daylight levels of light, less and less physical co-present interactions, lack of mental stimulation and challenge – are just unaligned with thriving. Research is only re-inforcing these fundamental findings.
As humans, we are creatures of earth. Inbodied interaction posits that if we align our designs with our earthliness we can thrive. the Inbodied Five and the Circumbodied 4, give us touchstones for checking that alignment – fundamental questions – we can ask to check if this design is the right thing to design. Does it help us be more aligned with earth? Does it help us quite literally get outside, in the light, be with each other in the real?
And does it do this for all, at scale?
Our mission in the WellthLab – use this inbodied interaction touchstone to Align our Designs so more of us humans of earth can thrive. help #makeNormalBetter for all at scale.
post script:
Being a healthy human in an environment that seems – when measured against the in5/c4 qualities – to be going in the opposite direction is grossly challenging. It’s also an opportunity or perhaps a responsibility to think about this inbodied alignment at this complex systems level scale. One of our group’s projects is to re-imagine what work and workplaces would be like – if they were aligned with these inbodied interaction principles. What would change? how?
Plainly for most of our evolution – that’s exactly where we’ve been – aligned. Given where we are now – how realign our designs with our inbodied, cirucmbodied, humans-of-earth, selves?
