Using body cards in a design process for going from bodily experiences to design

To build creative links between ethnographic findings of bodily practices and design, we developed so called body cards to document experiential qualities to be used in idea generation and early prototyping. These focus on the stages of a design process that involves investigating a use domain and making such knowledge relevant and usable for design. This involves challenges of effectively describing – with theoretical and empirical grounding – how bodily action and experience actually occur, in relation to people, artefacts, and activities. We discuss challenges in bridging between ethnographic findings and design of technologies for bodily experiences. Designing for the body in interaction is then not only about better ways of sensing bodily actions, but just as much about integrating these in the space of social interaction.