This paper presents early findings from my practice-based PhD, Bodies(in)Form, which investigates embodied approaches to interaction design. It focuses on routesetting—the practice of designing indoor climbing routes—as a way of examining how design can engage more directly with bodies, movement, and difference.

Drawing on post-phenomenological feminist theory, particularly the work of Sara Ahmed and Gail Weiss, the paper frames embodied design in terms of encounters, understood as relational, intercorporeal, and situated exchanges between bodies, materials, and environments.

The research is developed through autobiographical, practice-based inquiry, including observation of professional routesetters and participation in routesetting training. It shows how routesetters use their own bodies to speculate, anticipate, and design for the movements and experiences of others, creating routes that mediate emotional, kinaesthetic, and pedagogic encounters.

In doing so, the paper positions routesetting as a form of embodied design that foregrounds relationality, bodily difference, and the transfer of experience between bodies.

Reference

Robinson, Scott. ‘Design as Encounters’. Paper presented at Designing for Bodies: Practices, Imaginaries and Discourses, Kolding, Denmark. Book of Abstracts, 2025.