Designing for Perceptual Crossing: Applying and Evaluating Design Notions

The research focuses on designing for perceptive qualities in artefacts and is inspired by and grounded in the phenomenology of perception (Merleau-Ponty, 1958) and ecological psychology (Gibson, 1986). Both bring forward the ‘active nature of perception’1 and argue that ‘the body is the centre point of perception’2. This body that enables us to sense the world is here considered an active and open form. Perception is not seen as an internal representation built upon the sensory input we gain: It is seen as the result of the dynamic coupling between a person’s action in relation to her or his environment and the sensory input this environment provides (Lenay et al., 2007). Perception is here considered the result of the actions we undertake and the sensory feedback these actions result in and the other way around (Figure 1). We can access the expressive qualities and the meaning of the world by means of our body. For us this is fundamental to our design-research as we can design for actions in artefacts and invite people to participate in active engagement with these artefacts. About this active relation between our body and the world, i.e. perception, Abram, following Merleau-Ponty, states: “Perception is inherently interactive and participatory: It is a reciprocal interplay between the perceiver and the perceived” (Abram, 1996, p. 89). Our direct sensorial experience, our direct perception, only exists because of its reciprocal nature. We are only able to touch because our body is a touchable thing; to touch is also to feel oneself being touched and to see is also to feel oneself seen. In the phenomenological description of the body of a person two aspects are described. (1) The ‘lived-body’ is the body as I experience it; it is my ability to perceive. (2) The ‘body as an image’ is, as it were, the object I am in space, my appearance to others (Lenay, 2010). It is in the reciprocal nature ORIGINAL ARTICLE