Horizon Blog

Soma Co-Designed Technology for Wellbeing  – An introduction blog

Wellbeing of the mind and body benefits from an holistic approach which recognises the multisensory capabilities of people. Developments in the design of digital technologies which incorporate the use of sensory qualities of physical and digital materials, objects and bodies have opened up opportunities to transform and enrich embodied experiences to support mental health and physical wellbeing  

This project will explore novel data-drive technologies for digital mental health (DMH) embedding responsible research and innovation throughout. Recognising that two groups at particular risk of poor mental and physical wellbeing are those living with dementia, and neurodivergent people. Research will evaluate Soma design [a process that involves the designer’s body, personal practice and active stance] as a method to explore embodied sensory experiences and their relationship to self-care and wellbeing in people who may have atypical sensory sensitivities. 

Soma Co-Designed Technology for Wellbeing is led by Pat Brundell, a Research Fellow in the Mixed Reality Lab (MRL) within the School of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham (UoN). Pat has a background in psychology, interaction design and user experience evaluation. He is interested in creative and emancipatory design for wellbeing of disabled people and sits on the UoN Disability steering group as lead of the UoN Neurodivergent Staff Network. 

The team is made up of Paul Tennent, an Associate Professor in the MRL with a research focus on mixed reality cultural experiences. He has a long track record of leading and delivering projects designing and building mixed reality and tangible interfaces. Juan Martinez Avila, an Assistant Professor in Computer Science, also based at the MRL, with a research focus on intelligent and interactive music technologies (I2MT) and embodied interaction. Armaghan Moemeni an Assistant Professor in the Cyber-physical Health and Assistive Robotics Technologies Group (CHART) and affiliated with School of Medicine’s Centre for Dementia. Maghan is experienced in the design and development of assisted living software and human AI interfaces and her research interests focus on personalised healthcare with AI , medical images diagnosis and assisted human-robot interaction. Sachiyo Ito-Jaeger, a Research Fellow in the NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) and School of Medicine, with an interest in the wellbeing of vulnerable populations, how somaesthetic approach can be applied to digital mental health (DMH) and how responsible research and innovation (RRI) can be implemented in DMH. Emily Thorn is a Research Assistant with expertise in Design, HCI and UX, interested in user experiences with emerging technologies, Emily has worked with us on several Horizon projects. Neil Chadborn, a senior Research Fellow in the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration East Midlands, has also worked with us previously, on the Memory Machine project. Neil has led research on inequities of dementia care in South Asian community and previous work includes participatory research on digital records in care homes and realist evaluation of dementia-friendly communities.  Professor Chris Greenhalgh also joins the team with extensive experience of developing healthcare applications.

Work will involve Soma co-design workshops to support exploration and the development of a series of prototype interactive technologies to be curated at City as Lab in a public exhibition. The Co-design practise will be focused through lived experience expertise which is a novel application area for Soma design and digital mental wellbeing. 

 

 

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