Courtney N. Reed

Micro-phenomenology has recently gained traction in HCI as ways of accessing embodied, lived dimensions of interaction that resist conventional qualitative capture. By foregrounding pre-reflective experience, this approach promises greater experiential precision. However, when designers and HCI researchers attempt to apply Micro-phenomenology in practice, frictions often emerge. The method was not originally designed for design contexts, raising questions about accessibility, adaptability, and epistemic fit. We ask what is gained, transformed, or compromised when micro-phenomenology is brought into design research, and how they might evolve through situated practice. The workshop combines hands-on demonstrations of interviewing and analysis with guided reflective listening, followed by rotating small-group dialogues and material exploration. By bringing together researchers and practitioners interested in embodied and experiential approaches to HCI, the workshop aims to broaden access to micro-phenomenology while spurring critical dialogue about their limitations, transformations, and potential contributions to design research.

This paper investigates transmorphic music, a form of composition with animal voices created by Brazilian musicians Albery and Thiago Albuquerque, focusing on their 2021 work “Amazônia Verde Viva”. Through interview with Thiago, we link the work and its composition to broader debate about the borders between human, non-human, and technological voices in the face of climate change and ecological destruction. In artistic practice with novel technologies, this work contributes the (1) principle of transmorphic interaction and attunement to non-human voices and musical interfaces, and (2) alternative approaches from the Global South to the use of audio technologies in anticolonial and perspectivist practices in dialogue with animal collaborators.

Questions of agency and authorship become central to the design of expressive digital musical instruments (DMIs). Agency is recognized as essential for meaningful musical performance but remains difficult to operationalize and measure. We here propose sensory attenuation as an implicit measure of self-attribution and a practical proxy for agency in DMI interaction. We implemented a pressure-based control system for a digital synthesizer, introducing nonlinear behaviors along pressure and time dimensions. Using a psychophysics experiment combined with qualitative interviews, we investigate how these nonlinearities affect performers’ sense of agency. Results suggest that sensory attenuation provides a viable proxy for self-attribution, but only when output exceeds a volume threshold. Furthermore, we observe interaction effects between temporal and action nonlinearities, indicating that maintaining agency requires control across both dimensions. Our findings provide empirical grounding for using sensory attenuation for experimental agency evaluation methods.