Bodystorming is a technique sometimes used in
interaction design
Interaction design, often abbreviated as IxD, is "the practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services." Beyond the digital aspect, interaction design is also useful when creating physical (non-digital) produ ...
or as a
creativity technique
Creativity techniques are methods that encourage creative actions, whether in the arts or sciences. They focus on a variety of aspects of creativity, including techniques for idea generation and divergent thinking, methods of re-framing problems, ...
. It has also been cited as catalyzing scientific research when used as a
modeling
A model is an informative representation of an object, person or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin ''modulus'', a measure.
Models c ...
tool.
The idea is to imagine what it would be like if the product existed, and act as though it exists, ideally in the place it would be used. It is going through an idea with improvised artifacts and physical activities to envision a solution. This User Experience Design (UXD) technique is ideal to design physical spaces (e.g. the interior design of a shop) but can also be used to design physical products or software.
Use in Scientific Research
American dance company Black Label Movement’s artistic director
Carl Flink created a bodystorming system with University of Minnesota biomedical engineer David Odde in 2009 as a part of their Moving Cell Project. funded by the University’s Institute for Advanced Study. The system initially brought dance artists and scientists together, including Dance Your PhD founder John Bohannon who first applied the term "bodystorming" to this method, in order to rapid prototype research hypotheses in biomedical engineering using choreographic rules for participants to follow. As a technique for scientists and dancers to model scientific theories, it has been credited with catalyzing scientific research
and gives the participants the “psychological sense of what it would be like to be a molecule". Bodystorming sessions have been held at the 2018 Neuro-Oncology Symposium as well as the PSON Annual Investegators Meeting (2019) allowing scientists to use the Bodystorming system to model their current research. It also “offers new opportunities to learn, teach, and drive new discoveries across disciplinary boundaries.”
Subsequently, research scientists have found the method not only “builds awareness of science” but understands that the body is “not just a site of knowledge but also a medium of communication.” A typical bodystorming session poses scientific questions then “provides visual information on why a model works or fails and streamlines the process of selecting a successful model.”
Opinions on this method
The proponents of this idea like to point out the fact that you get up and move, trying things out with your own body, rather than just sitting around a table and discussing it while having to imagine it in the abstract (as in the case of
brainstorming
Brainstorming is a group creativity technique by which efforts are made to find a conclusion for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas spontaneously contributed by its members.
In other words, brainstorming is a situation where a grou ...
). It is a proper user-centered design method, since it can be carried out by the designers as well as the users of the final product.
References
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* Wilson, C. (2011)
UXD Method 11 of 100: Bodystorming
Specific
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Creativity techniques
Usability
Human–computer interaction