← CHI 2026 map

CHI '26 · Honorable mention · full-paper review · confidence medium-high

Aesthetics of Felt Asymmetry

Alice C Haynes , Laia Turmo Vidal , Andreas Lindegren , Ran Zhou , Alejandra Gómez Ortega , Joo Young Park , Anna Brynskov , Hannah Johnson , Kristina Höök

DOI PDF Program page Page JSON

This is a conceptually strong soma-design paper whose main contribution is reframing bodily asymmetry as an aesthetic and generative resource. The novelty is real at the level of design framing and vocabulary, but the evidence is exploratory and should be read as a qualitative, field-level argument rather than a validated method or system.

Axes Lens

Rare contribution shape, typical evidence profile. The point here is not a score. It is to show what kind of claim the paper makes, and whether the evidence pattern is unusual or baseline in this 268 -review set.

Review Summary

This paper’s strongest contribution is not a new system or technique, but a persuasive reframing of what counts as a design resource in soma design and feminist HCI. The authors explicitly position felt asymmetries as “somaesthetic experiences of difference in the body” and argue that these should be engaged as generative and critical material rather than treated only as deficits to be corrected. That is a meaningful departure from common-sense and mainstream design assumptions, because it shifts the design goal from normalization toward resonance, amplification, and reconfiguration of lived bodily difference. The novelty is therefore primarily a design-space contribution: it opens a vocabulary and a conceptual territory for thinking about asymmetry as something that can support intimacy, estrangement, joy, tension, and creativity in interaction design. The validation, however, is intentionally limited. The paper relies on an autobiographical design exploration and somatic explorations with nine designers, including individual inquiries and workshops. That is appropriate for the kind of knowledge being produced, but it means the claims are best understood as qualitative and generative rather than broadly generalizable. The authors themselves acknowledge boundary conditions: cultivating sensitivity to asymmetry is not equally accessible to all, and the work depended on time, context, and material, physical, and psychological resources. So the paper is compelling as a field argument and as a source of design inspiration, but it should not be overread as evidence that these ideas have been validated across populations or deployed in real-world systems.

What Changed

Canon before

Prior CHI and soma design work treats bodily difference largely as something to accommodate, normalize, or design around; this paper reframes asymmetry as an aesthetic and generative resource.

Departure from common sense

The paper’s stance departs from the usual corrective framing of bodily asymmetry: it explicitly argues that asymmetries are not flaws to eliminate, but resources that can be amplified, reconfigured, and designed with.

Actual novelty

It introduces felt asymmetries as a new somaesthetic design site and uses autobiographical inquiry plus workshops with designers to articulate how asymmetry can function as a design material, estrangement activity, and doorway into intimate experience.

Evidence

The paper’s contribution is primarily conceptual and exploratory. The abstract and discussion frame felt asymmetry as a design space and a generative resource, while the methods show a year-long autobiographical inquiry plus a workshop and interviews with nine designers. The evidence supports a field-level reframing and a design-space contribution, but not broad empirical validation beyond a small qualitative exploration.

Limits

Method limits

The validation is limited to autobiographical inquiry and a small qualitative engagement with nine designers; the evidence does not show controlled comparison, deployment, or end-user evaluation.

Deployment limits

The paper’s ideas are best suited to exploratory soma design and reflective design practice rather than immediate claims about generalizable user outcomes or system performance.

Boundary conditions

The authors note that cultivating sensitivity to asymmetry is not equally accessible to all, and that the work depends on time, context, and resources to attune to and share lived experience.

Manual check: Verify that the full-text span used for evidence corresponds to the quoted abstract/methods/discussion passages in the source file; the packet’s exact evidence spans are coarse and one provided span is clearly non-informative.

Position in field

This sits within soma design and feminist HCI as a reframing move: it extends bodily difference from a problem of accommodation into a source of aesthetic, critical, and generative design inquiry, while remaining grounded in first-person and small-group qualitative exploration rather than large-scale validation.

Abstract

Our bodies mediate every interaction with technology, yet—as soma design and feminist HCI remind us—the body is not a neutral canvas. We introduce and examine felt asymmetries—somaesthetic experiences of difference in the body—as a site for generative and critical engagement in interaction design. Through an autobiographical design exploration, and a series of somatic explorations with nine designers including individual inquiries and workshops, we sensitised to, articulated, and shared personal experiences of asymmetry. We draw from these explorations to contribute: (1) Opening a design space exploring the aesthetics of felt asymmetries; (2) Reflections on engaging with asymmetry in design, e.g. as a design material, an estrangement activity or doorway into intimate experience; (3) Considerations for creating technologies that resonate with, rather than erase, the asymmetries of lived experience. We argue that bodily asymmetries are not only to be accommodated in design, but embraced as aesthetic resources—sources of joy, tension, and creativity.