Congratulations Michael Arnold Mages! Michael, Associate Professor and recently appointed Interim Chair of Art+Design, along with co-author Stephen Neely, published Somaesthetic Design: The Experiencing Body and the Dynamics of Time (Transcript, 2026).

Transcript Press writes, “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.”

Michael and Stephen explain, “This book grew from a simple realization: our most powerful experiences are bodily and unfold in-time, yet much design still ignores felt time. Human experience manifests as gestures, rhythms, and flows, yet design practices have lacked a language for these understandings. This book bridges that gap, offering tools for designers that place time, embodiment, and lived experience at the center. The book emphasizes that design is not just about visual aesthetics but about the dynamic experiences bodies encounter over time. By introducing Somaesthetic Design, we focus attention on how physical interactions shape experiences, allowing readers to recognize and articulate the rhythms, tensions, and flows of everyday life.”

To learn more about Michael’s work, click here.