1. Body-Mapping a Daily Interaction

Pick one interaction you repeat every day without thinking — unlocking your phone, opening a door, making tea, boarding a bus. Perform it slowly, three times, and each time write down every part of your body involved: not just the hand that presses or turns, but posture, gaze, breath, weight shift, the micro-adjustments you make without noticing.

Then ask: which of these movements is purely functional (it could be removed with no loss), and which one, if removed, would make the interaction feel wrong even if it still "worked"? That second category is where embodied meaning is hiding.

Write-up: One paragraph describing the interaction as a piece of choreography, not a task list. Use verbs the body actually does — pivot, cradle, hover, brace — rather than interface verbs like "tap" or "select."

2. Designing a Poetic Object Without a Screen

Design a physical object that communicates one piece of information — the weather outside, how much time is left, whether someone is thinking of you — using no digital display, no numbers, and no text. The object can move, change shape, warm up, make sound, or simply invite touch.

Constrain yourself using the Manifesto's seven principles: design the center (what must always be legible) and deliberately leave the edges open (how it's interpreted). Sketch three versions before you commit to one, and build the third with whatever is on hand — string, a jar, a folded paper mechanism.

3. Movement-Based Prototyping

Before you touch a single sensor, prototype an interaction with your own body standing in for the device. One person is the "system," one person is the "user." The user performs a gesture; the system responds only through movement, posture, or proximity — no words.

Run through the 4E lens from the Frameworks page as you iterate:

• Embodied — what does the gesture cost the user physically?
• Embedded — does the surrounding space change what's possible?
• Enactive — does meaning emerge only through repeated attempts?
• Extended — could a simple prop (a stick, a scarf) become part of the "interface"?

Only after three or four rounds of human-to-human prototyping should you translate the strongest version into a sketch of an actual sensor-based build.

4. Embodied Game-Design Sprint

This exercise mirrors the design tasks in the Games Essay. In groups of two or three, invent a game where the controller itself is uncomfortable, effortful, or physically honest in a way a standard gamepad never is.

Start from a constraint, not a technology:

• The controller must get physically heavier or harder to hold the longer you play.
• The player cannot win sitting down.
• The "correct" input can only be discovered by failing at the wrong one first.

Build a cardboard-and-string prototype of the controller (a functioning microcontroller is optional — a human operator can simulate the sensor by watching and reacting). Playtest it on someone outside your group and run it through the Games Essay's Sweat Test, Screen-Off Test, and 1:1 Test before you call it done.