Somaesthetic Design: The Experiencing Body and the Dynamics of Time

Over the past twenty-five years, design practice has expanded from making objects to shaping experiences that unfold in-time. As this expansion has accelerated, designers have gained powerful new tools - but often without a shared language for shaping embodied experience. Somaesthetic Design: The Experiencing Body and the Dynamics of Time responds by focusing on the experiencing body as a key source of design knowledge. Drawing from embodied practices and performance traditions, Michael Arnold Mages and Stephen Neely give designers a shared vocabulary and framework for understanding, crafting, and evaluating lived experience as it is felt and sustained in time.

Author: Michael Arnold Mages,Stephen Neely
Publisher: Transcript Publishing
Published: 07/28/2026
Pages: 292
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.87lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.62d
ISBN13: 9783837681284
ISBN10: 3837681289
BISAC Categories:
- Philosophy | Metaphysics
- Social Science | Media Studies
- Philosophy | Mind & Body

About the Author

Michael Arnold Mages (PhD) is a designer, strategist, and musician. He teaches in the Information Design and Data Visualization and Experience Design programs at Northeastern University, where he is an assistant professor of design in the Department of Art & Design, and director of the Health and Wellness Design Lab.

Stephen Neely (PhD) is a teacher, conductor, theorist, and clinician who lectures and presents workshops in the fields of design, music, architecture, and pedagogy. He is the Milton and Cynthia Friedman associate professor of music and director of graduate studies for the Carnegie Mellon University School of Music.