Tensions and Opportunities: Workshop at Creativity & Cognition Conference

Understanding lived, embodied experience remains a persistent challenge in Human–Computer Interaction. While many HCI methods capture behaviour, evaluation outcomes, or retrospective accounts, the subtle and pre-reflective qualities of experience often remain difficult to access. Micro-phenomenology offers one promising methodological approach for investigating these dimensions by guiding participants to revisit and articulate the unfolding structure of lived experience carefully.

In recent years, micro-phenomenological methods have emerged in HCI and design research, particularly in studies of embodied interaction, sensory experience, and reflective engagement with technology. However, when these methods travel into design-oriented research contexts, researchers frequently encounter practical and conceptual tensions. Questions arise about how interviewing practices translate across languages and cultural contexts, how analytical procedures align with design-oriented inquiry, and how researchers can responsibly work with experiences that may be personal or emotionally resonant.

This workshop invites researchers and practitioners interested in embodied and experiential approaches to HCI to collectively explore these questions. Through demonstrations, guided exercises, and collaborative discussions, participants will examine how micro-phenomenological interviewing and analysis can be adapted, translated, and critically reflected upon within design research practice.

By bringing together researchers and practitioners working with embodied and experiential approaches to HCI, the workshop aims to foster dialogue around the opportunities and limitations of micro-phenomenological methods, share practical adaptations emerging in different research contexts, and cultivate an emerging community of practice around experiential inquiry in design research.

To apply to participate, please submit an Expression of Interest form.

Submission deadline: 20 April 2026

Notifications: 30 April 2026

Xinglin Sun is a PhD candidate at the College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University, China. Her research investigates how embodied design can support women’s mental wellbeing, with recent work examining how embodied practices facilitate stress related self-disclosure among adolescent girls[20]. As part of her doctoral project, she has worked with women in embodied embroidery practices and conducted micro-phenomenological interviews to study their lived bodily experiences.

Yulin Tian is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University, China. Her work spans embodied interaction, digital health, and technology-mediated intimacy. Grounded in lived bodily experience, she explores how game-based rehabilitation, self-tracking with wearable health technology, and cross-dimensional intimacy with virtual characters become sites for rethinking human–technology relations.

Claudia Núñez-Pacheco is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Computer Science and Media Technology at Malmö University in Sweden. Her research investigates bodily ways of knowing and language as materials for aesthetic experiences in design. She employs introspective and somatic practices to explore aesthetic and generative qualities in our interactions with technology.

Bruna Petreca is a Reader in Human Experience and Materials at the Centre for Materials Science and Culture, Royal College of Art, in London, UK. Her work focuses on integrating human experience into emerging areas of materials development, including the circular economy, digital environments, distributed manufacture, and human health and wellbeing. Bruna has over a decade of experience with micro-phenomenology. She pioneered its application in textiles and design, and continues to advocate for its wider adoption across HCI, art, and design research.

Mirjana Prpa is an Assistant Professor at the Computational Media and Arts, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), China. Mirjana’s research interests include understanding the complexity of user experiences by leveraging micro-phenomenology in HCI and design research and its application to unfolding the complexity of experiences arising from human-AI interactions.

Courtney N. Reed is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Digital Technologies and Creative Futures at Loughborough University London, UK. Her work explores vocalist-voice relationships and how technoscientific and music pedagogical values shape the design and use of digital musical instruments. She has five years of experience employing micro-phenomenology to explore collaboration with technology in music performance.

Anton Poikolainen Rosén is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, Sweden. He has used micro-phenomenological interviews to articulate experiences of the more-than-human world to inform the design of technologies that are more in tune with our experiences of ecological entanglements.

Ekaterina R. Stepanova is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the KTH Royal Institue of Technology supported by Banting Fellowship. Her work applies soma-design to design of immersive art installations aiming to support connection to one’s self, others, and the world around them. With a background in Cognitive Science, she centres her work in approaches rooted in enactive cognition, including a trainning in micro-phenomenology, which she applies as a method for evocation of experience to unpack the complex emotional experiences, which are often tacit and embodied.

Laia Turmo Vidal is a postdoc at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. Her current research combines touch technologies, first and second person design methods, and research through design to address highly personal and sensitive contexts, such as self-body perception and lived experiences of health.

ACM Creativity & Cognition 2026 takes place from 13–16 July at Central Saint Martins (CSM), University of the Arts London.

The theme of the 2026 conference, Creativity for Change, responds to the rapid pace of change in our world and emphasizes the power of creativity in driving positive transformations.

For more information and to register, visit cc.acm.org