Using a phenomenological appraoch, this topic opens for investigation of questions such as:
- how can we understand our own and other peoples' bodily experiences with technology?
- how can we as designers use these experiences to describe and represent them for use in our design processes?
Phenomenology is an approach to understanding our experiences with technology. Phenomenology as a branch of philosophy studies subjective experiences, that is how we experience ourselves in our surroundings, how we experience our relations with other people, how we experience our relations with technology and so on. In trying to understand human experience, phenomenology puts emphasizes on the role of embodiment in human perception and cognition. How do we relate to and move in relation to the technology? How do we understand movement, and what does a movement "mean"? How do we incorporate technology as extensions of our bodies?
For designers, phenomenology is useful as the artifacts and tools we make, affect the way people experience themselves and their surroundings, and phenomenology gives us a way to understand, describe and represent our experiences with technology.
A master on this topic is relevant for those wishing to undertake design experiments, theorietical work as well as studies of technology use. Useful topics are, among others: participatory design, systemoriented design, service design, computer supported cooperative work, HCI, interactin design, Bruk før bruk, as well as the methods course.
Projects can be in Norwegian or English.