Towards a technique for articulating aesthetic experiences in design using Focusing and the Felt Sense
Claudia Núñez-Pacheco, Lian Loke · The Design Journal · 2018
Aesthetic experiences embody a sense of unity that makes their particular qualities memorable to our existence. The richness of meaning encapsulated by routine acts on the other hand, is mostly taken for granted. We introduce the somatic Focusing technique to access the tacit dimension of people’s personal stories, offering a new perspective on experiential content for design use. This technique facilitates extracting aesthetic meaning from unremarkable experiences, by prompting participants to ponder situations through their bodily felt-sensing. Focusing has proven effective to scaffold the emergence of self-discoveries or insights, being revealed directly by those who experience the technique.