Authors
Reflection is fundamental to how people make sense of everyday life, helping them navigate moments of growth, uncertainty, and change. Yet in HCI, existing frameworks of designing technologies to support reflection remain narrow — emphasizing cognitive, rational problem-solving and individual self-improvement.
We introduce Daoist philosophy as a non-Western lens to broaden this scope and reimagine reflective practices in interactive systems. Combining insights from Daoist literature with semi-structured interviews with 18 Daoist priests, scholars, and practitioners, we identified three key dimensions of everyday reflection: Stillness, Resonance, and Emergence.
These dimensions reveal emergent, embodied, relational, and ethically driven qualities often overlooked in HCI research. We articulate their potential to inform alternative frameworks for interactive systems for reflection, advocating a shift from reflection toward reflecting-with, and highlight the potential of Daoism as an epistemological resource for the HCI community.
"The way is empty, yet use will not drain it."
— Laozi, 道德經 Dao De Jing, Verse 04Rather than offering a doctrinal account of Daoism, we draw on its central ideas as resources for developing an alternative framework of reflection in HCI — complementing Western perspectives while sensitively introducing non-Western ways of knowing.
A pre-cognitive, embodied openness that loosens the self and creates space for meaning to appear. Through forgetting social roles and practicing active silence, individuals cultivate receptive awareness — not constructing the self, but loosening it.
Meaning arising through inward attentiveness and outward sensitivity. Drawing on 感應 (Gan-Ying), resonance frames reflection as relational — attending to inner presence and maintaining mirror-like, non-judgmental awareness of situations.
A dynamic attunement aligning self with bodily rhythms, situational flows, and natural cycles — while dissolving ego-boundaries into relational transformation. Inspired by Zhuangzi's Butterfly Dream: boundaries between self and other collapse into shared becoming (大化).
Our findings suggest three design orientations for technologies that support reflection — each departing from the dominant logic of data-driven self-optimization.
| Aspect | HCI / Western Reflection | Daoist Reflection |
|---|---|---|
| Orientation | Thinking about experience | Being within experience |
| Cognitive mode | Deliberate reasoning | Attuned awareness |
| Effort | Active cognitive effort | Wuwei (non-forcing) |
| Process style | Analytical processing | Experiential sensing |
| Relationship to experience | Observing from distance | Immersed in experience |
| Knowledge formation | Explanation & interpretation | Insight through attunement |
| Body–mind relation | Mind-centered cognition | Embodied awareness |
| Reflection mechanism | Questioning & analysis | Resonance & emergence |
We thank all participants for their time and insights. We also thank the reviewers for their constructive feedback, as well as members of the Joyful Experiences in Design and Interaction (JEDI) Lab for their valuable input.
We gratefully acknowledge the Daoist internal arts and contemplative lineages that informed the embodied practices and ethical orientations underpinning this research.
This work was supported by the Humanities and Social Sciences Seed Fund (ID: A-8002870-00-00), funded by the National University of Singapore.
