Expanding the Digital Sensorium: Alternative Visions for Human-Computer Interaction

Digital communication and interaction research within Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) has increasingly focused on achieving high-fidelity re-presentations of complex human sensory and communicative experiences. This preoccupation has driven technical innovation across areas such as haptics, multisensory robotics, immersive realities, digital twins, and artificial intelligence. However, this dominant paradigm has also led to substantial conceptual and practical limitations. By reproducing a narrow, technically defined view of the human senses, this approach constrains the diversity of digital sensory experiences and reinforces a monocultural model of interaction that privileges certain bodies, identities, and ways of being. Recent studies in sensory anthropology, inclusive HCI design, and posthuman computing highlight both the inadequacy of these assumptions and the urgent need for alternative frameworks that move beyond human-centric re-presentation towards transformation, diversity, and more-than-human perspectives.This Research Topic aims to critically interrogate the dominance of human-centric re-presentation, mimicry and replication within HCI and to explore alternative visions for digital communication, interaction, and design. It seeks to open new theoretical, methodological, and design trajectories that challenge this dominant paradigm to foster richer, more inclusive, and imaginative digital sensory worlds. We encourage contributions that critically examine existing approaches to digital human-centric re-presentation, develop conceptual or technological alternatives, or propose new frameworks for multisensory design inspired by plural, hybrid, or more-than-human perspectives. Contributors may also explore the ethical, cultural, and experiential implications of moving beyond human-centric re-presentation—asking what new modes of relation, communication, and experience might become possible.This Research Topic covers conceptual, methodological, and applied work that reimagines how sensory and communicative experiences shape future digital interaction. We welcome contributions from HCI, design research, media studies, sensory anthropology, and related disciplines.To gather further insights within this scope, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:• Critical analyses of human-centric re-presentation in sensory and interaction design• Alternative models for digital communication and multisensory interaction• More-than-human and posthuman perspectives on HCI and embodiment• Inclusive, plural, and decolonial approaches to sensory technology design• Prototyping and case studies demonstrating novel modes of digital sensing or interaction• Theoretical reflections on the ethical and social implications of moving beyond human-centric sensory replication efforts• Explorations of affect, embodiment, and expanded sensoria in digital environments Topic editors: Carey Jewitt, Sara Price, Kouta Minamizawa, Desiree Foerster, Nadia Bianchi-Berthouze, Nihar Sabnis Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/80658/expanding-the-digital-sensorium-alternative-visions-for-human-computer-interaction