How bodies matter

Abstract

Our physical bodies play a central role in shaping human experience in the world, understandingof the world, and interactions in the world. This paper draws on theories of embodiment - from psychology, sociology, and philosophy - synthesizing five themes we believe are particularly salient for interaction design: thinking through doing, performance, visibility, risk, and thick practice. We intro-duce aspects of human embodied engagement in the world with the goal of inspiring new interaction design ap-proaches and evaluations that better integrate the physical and computational worlds.