CHLOE

PARK

Selected Work

Designing for Conscious Agency

Delicate flowers taped to a wall.

ALIO

A multimodal narrative–somatic system that scaffolds agency by reshaping how people relate to internalized problem narratives.

Overview

ALIO is a research-through-design project that investigates how AI-mediated, multimodal systems can scaffold personal agency by reshaping how people relate to internalized problem narratives without interpreting, diagnosing, or authoring meaning on their behalf, grounded in narrative therapy, cognitive science, and embodied interaction.

ALIO understands agency not as emotional regulation or cognitive control, but as the capacity to externalize, reposition, and re-author one’s relationship to dominant self-stories. The system explores how computational structures and somatic cues can create conditions for this process while preserving human authorship and interpretive autonomy.

Primary Research Question

How might an AI-mediated multimodal system scaffold meta-awareness and re-authoring—so a person can reclaim personal agency from an internalized, problem-saturated story?

Overview

Role

Narrative therapy–informed framework design, research framing, interaction model, system architecture, ethical boundaries

FOCUS

Agency reconstruction through externalization and multimodal scaffolding

Timeline

Ongoing (Mar 2025– )

Outputs

System framework, interaction sequences, diagrams, artifact concepts, interface modules

ALIGNMENT

MIT Media Lab — Cyborg Psychology, Fluid Interfaces, Critical Matter

[1] Origin/Challenge

Where the Problem Emerges

DMN loop

Self

= Problem

Problem-saturated story

ALIO began from a simple but persistent observation: People do not suffer only at the level of emotion or symptom; they suffer when problem-saturated stories become internalized as identity.

The Narrative Therapy Lens

Narrative therapy describes how individuals internalize problem-saturated stories shaped by socio-culturally constructed discourses, relational dynamics, and accumulated experience. Over time, these interpretations consolidate into identity conclusions—thin descriptions that narrow what a person believes is possible for themselves.

The Cognitive Science Layer

From a cognitive science perspective, these self-referential stories are reinforced by the Default Mode Network (DMN), which under stress tends to rehearse familiar narrative loops. When coordination with salience and control networks weakens, attention becomes captured by internal meaning-making, making these stories feel inevitable and self-defining.

At this discursive–neurocognitive intersection, emotional regulation alone is insufficient.What constrains people is not emotion itself, but the relationship between identity and meaning that becomes rigid over time.

 

This is the condition ALIO is designed to intervene in.

[2] Insight

The Moment Agency Returns

Across narrative therapy, a consistent pattern emerges:

Meaningful change does not begin with emotional regulation alone, but when a person can shift their relationship to the problem.

 

Narrative therapy describes this shift as repositioning—the moment when the problem is externalized and alternative stories become visible. Agency returns when meaning is no longer fused with identity, but becomes something a person can relate to, question, and reshape.

[3] What the System Must Support

If agency emerges through repositioning rather than regulation, then any system claiming to support agency must be structured around the conditions that make repositioning possible.

ALIO is structured around three required processes:

Meta-awareness

A state of observing one's mental and emotional landscape with detachment, also referred to as "awareness of being aware" or decentering.

It’s the ability to notice internal narratives as patterns rather than facts.

Externalization

A separation the problem from the personal identity of the person, grounded in the idea that the person is not the problem; the problem is the problem. By locating problems as socially and historically constructed influences rather than personal flaws or inherent traits.

Re-authoring

A process of identifying and developing alternative, preferred personal narratives that foreground personal values, skills, and intentions, restoring a sense of agency and authorship.

If AI can scaffold meta-awareness, externalization, repositioning, and preferred-story building, then AI can participate in psychological meaning-making in a supportive, non-authoritative way.

[4] The Core

Why a Computational System

People can recognize that a problem-saturated story is shaping their experience and still remain unable to reposition themselves in relation to it. Insight alone does not guarantee agency when meaning is continuously rehearsed, reinforced, and reabsorbed into identity through cognitive and relational loops. This project asks whether a computational system—rather than a therapist or prescriptive intervention—can help sustain the conditions required for repositioning.

Specifically, whether AI-mediated structures and embodied cues can support meta-awareness, externalization, and re-authoring without interpreting, diagnosing, or authoring meaning on a person’s behalf.

ALIO approaches this challenge by treating AI not as an authority or expert, but as a scaffold that maintains interpretive openness over time, allowing agency to emerge through relation rather than correction.

[5] Primary Research Question

How might an AI-mediated multimodal system scaffold meta-awareness and re-authoring

—so a person can reclaim agency from an internalized, problem-saturated story?

Narrative–Somatic Sequence

[6] Architectural Questions

Narrative–Somatic Architecture

Meta-Awareness

Attention as pattern

Somatic Modulation

Threshold mechanism

Externalization

& Repositioning

Narratives as relational objects

Re-authoring

Preferred meaning consolidation

Enable: Notice capture as pattern

Boundary: No interpretation or authority

Enable: Render meaning as relations

Boundary: No fixing or categorization

Enable: Interrupt loops, stabilize openness

Boundary: No regulation or outcome steering

The central design problem lies in translating narrative therapeutic principles into enforceable system constraints without reducing meaning-making to rules, categories, or outcomes.

Conditions and Constraints

[8] Design Decisions

  • Active

    — Conditions

    D1.

    Meta-awareness without interpretation

    ALIO is designed to surface shifts in narrative capture without interpreting content or assigning meaning. The system treats attention as a pattern to be noticed, not a truth to be explained or corrected.

     

    Design implication

    No semantic inference, diagnosis, or meaning attribution is performed by the system.

    D2.

    Relational externalization

    Dominant stories are externalized into manipulable, object-mediated representations that allow users to reposition themselves in relation to meaning.

     

    Design implication

    Narrative elements remain fluid, reconfigurable, and non-categorical. No fixed labels, taxonomies, or identity claims are imposed.

    D3.

    Somatic cues as threshold mechanisms

    Somatic modulation is used to interrupt automatic narrative loops and stabilize physiological reactivity, creating conditions for interpretive openness.

     

    Design implication

    Cues mark transitions and openings rather than optimize emotional states or direct outcomes.

  • Restrictive

    — Constraints

    D4.

    Functional dependency, not workflow

    Meta-awareness, externalization, and somatic modulation are architecturally interdependent. They form a continuous system linked by functional dependency rather than temporal order.

     

    Design implication

    Users may enter the system at different points, but agency emerges only when all functions remain available.

    D5.

    AI as scaffold and witness

    ALIO rearranges, reflects, and holds relational structures but never generates conclusions on the user’s behalf.

     

    Design implication

    Human authorship over meaning is preserved at every stage of interaction.

    D6.

    Repositioning, not correction

    There is no “right configuration” or optimal narrative state. Insight emerges through shifts in relation, distance, and perspective.

     

    Design implication

    Success is defined by increased capacity for choice, not behavioral compliance or emotional normalization.

[9] Architectural Translation

How design decisions are translated into enforceable system structure

  • No Interpretive Authority

    The system is structurally prevented from assigning meaning, explaining experience, or generating psychological conclusions.

  • Relational Representation Only

    Narratives can exist only as relational structures—nodes, distances, and connections—never as labels or categories.

  • State-Agnostic Somatic Signaling

    Somatic cues mark thresholds and transitions without regulating emotion or converging toward target states.

  • Functional Dependency Without Workflow

    System functions remain interdependent and continuously available rather than sequenced into a prescribed path.

  • Human Authorship Preserved

    The system may rearrange narrative material but cannot generate interpretations or preferred stories.

  • No Optimal Configuration

    No configuration, outcome, or narrative state is treated as correct or final.

[10] System Overview

A Constraint-Driven Multimodal System

ALIO is a system design proposal that explores how AI-mediated, multimodal structures can scaffold personal agency without interpreting, diagnosing, or authoring meaning on a person’s behalf.

 

Not designed to function as a therapeutic product or prescriptive workflow, the project is grounded in enforced constraints that define what the system is structurally permitted to do.

These constraints—non-interpretive behavior, relational representation of narrative, somatic modulation as a threshold mechanism, and preserved human authorship—give rise to a functionally interdependent system rather than a linear sequence. Meaning-making remains distributed across relational and embodied structures, allowing individuals to engage with personal narratives from multiple entry points without converging toward predefined outcomes.

[11-1] System Architecture

A Functionally Interdependent System

ALIO is structured as a functionally interdependent architecture, not a linear process or prescriptive workflow.

Rather than guiding users through a fixed sequence, the system maintains continuous availability of its core functions, allowing meta-awareness, externalization, somatic modulation, and relational witnessing to interact without enforcing order or convergence.

This architecture translates narrative–somatic principles into structural constraints: what the system can support, what it must remain agnostic to, and what it is intentionally prevented from doing.

[11-2] System Architecture

Structural Logic

No module operates independently or in isolation.

Agency emerges not from completion of a sequence, but from the system’s ability to sustain interpretive openness across time, preserving relational distance between identity and meaning while allowing preferred stories to remain accessible, revisitable, and socially acknowledged.

The architecture is intentionally incomplete by design: it cannot generate interpretations, optimize emotional states, or determine narrative outcomes. Its role is to hold conditions, not conclusions.

  • Enforces non-interpretive externalization of narratives
  • Prevents diagnostic labeling and categorical meaning assignment

Externalization Engine

Relational representation layer

Affective Artifact Layer

Somatic threshold mechanism

  • Interrupts automatic narrative loops without emotional regulation
  • Marks transitions and openings rather than directing outcomes

Museum of Agency

Temporal continuity structure

  • Preserves evidence of conscious repositioning over time
  • Avoids closure, resolution, or finalization of meaning

Witness Network

Constrained social scaffold

  • Enables acknowledgment without advice-giving or interpretation
  • Reinforces human authorship through relational witnessing

[12] Key Interaction Flow

User Experience

Diagram (a circular loop diagram with eight evenly spaced nodes)

Cue

Noticing

Naming

Repositioning

Action

Witnessing

Archiving

Integration

Somatic threshold mechanism

→

Cue

Meta-awareness

→

Noticing

Externalization / relational mapping

→

Naming, Repositioning

Agency expression

→

Action

Relational reinforcement

→

Witnessing

Continuity structure

→

Archiving, Integration

“Capabilities, not requirements. Users may enter the loop at any point.”

[13]

Affective Artifacts

Designed as an ecosystem of four distinct but interconnected modules. Each module targets a specific phase of the narrative reconstruction process.

By distributing the therapeutic process across digital sense-making and physical grounding, the system creates a continuous support loop.

Concrete staircase

ALIO Affective Matter Series

backyard of modernist home

scene 1

image

11

close-up of pine needles

scene 2

 

image

22

Design Principles

what ALIO must and must not do

Externalization over introspection

Shift meaning‑making into a relational, object‑mediated space.

Thickening preferred stories

Provide structures that help expand alternative narratives.

Embodied regulation

Use somatic interventions to support cognitive flexibility.

Agency

Design for repositioning, not correction.

-

Ethical Boundaries

Ethical Considerations

ALIO does not diagnose or pathologize. User narratives remain encrypted and locally stored. The system avoids imposing interpretations; instead, it supports users in articulating and thickening their preferred identity conclusions.

Impact

Early evaluations indicate reduced dominance of problem‑saturated interpretations, increased access to alternative stories, improved emotional recovery, and clearer articulation of values and intentions. ALIO demonstrates that interactive systems can operate at the level of meaning‑making, not merely behaviour change.

-

Reflection & Future Direction

Reflection

Building ALIO clarified my direction as a designer–researcher. I am interested in systems that operate at the intersection of narrative meaning, cognitive networks, and embodied experience. ALIO is my first attempt to translate these psychological mechanisms into a concrete interactive system that supports agency under constraint.

Closing

Designing for conscious agency means creating conditions where people can externalize dominant stories, access preferred identity conclusions, and reclaim a sense of identity and agency.

CHLOE PARK

About

Work

CHLOE

PARK

Selected Work

Designing for Conscious Agency

Delicate flowers taped to a wall.

ALIO

A multimodal narrative–somatic system that scaffolds agency by reshaping how people relate to internalized problem narratives.

Overview

ALIO is a research-through-design project that investigates how AI-mediated, multimodal systems can scaffold personal agency by reshaping how people relate to internalized problem narratives without interpreting, diagnosing, or authoring meaning on their behalf, grounded in narrative therapy, cognitive science, and embodied interaction.

ALIO understands agency not as emotional regulation or cognitive control, but as the capacity to externalize, reposition, and re-author one’s relationship to dominant self-stories. The system explores how computational structures and somatic cues can create conditions for this process while preserving human authorship and interpretive autonomy.

Primary Research Question

How might an AI-mediated multimodal system scaffold meta-awareness and re-authoring—so a person can reclaim personal agency from an internalized, problem-saturated story?

Overview

Role

Narrative therapy–informed framework design, research framing, interaction model, system architecture, ethical boundaries

FOCUS

Agency reconstruction through externalization and multimodal scaffolding

Timeline

Ongoing (Mar 2025– )

Outputs

System framework, interaction sequences, diagrams, artifact concepts, interface modules

ALIGNMENT

MIT Media Lab — Cyborg Psychology, Fluid Interfaces, Critical Matter

[1] Origin/Challenge

Where the Problem Emerges

DMN loop

Self

= Problem

Problem-saturated story

ALIO began from a simple but persistent observation: People do not suffer only at the level of emotion or symptom; they suffer when problem-saturated stories become internalized as identity.

The Narrative Therapy Lens

Narrative therapy describes how individuals internalize problem-saturated stories shaped by socio-culturally constructed discourses, relational dynamics, and accumulated experience. Over time, these interpretations consolidate into identity conclusions—thin descriptions that narrow what a person believes is possible for themselves.

The Cognitive Science Layer

From a cognitive science perspective, these self-referential stories are reinforced by the Default Mode Network (DMN), which under stress tends to rehearse familiar narrative loops. When coordination with salience and control networks weakens, attention becomes captured by internal meaning-making, making these stories feel inevitable and self-defining.

At this discursive–neurocognitive intersection, emotional regulation alone is insufficient.What constrains people is not emotion itself, but the relationship between identity and meaning that becomes rigid over time.

 

This is the condition ALIO is designed to intervene in.

[2] Insight

The Moment Agency Returns

Across narrative therapy, a consistent pattern emerges:

Meaningful change does not begin with emotional regulation alone, but when a person can shift their relationship to the problem.

 

Narrative therapy describes this shift as repositioning—the moment when the problem is externalized and alternative stories become visible. Agency returns when meaning is no longer fused with identity, but becomes something a person can relate to, question, and reshape.

[3] What the System Must Support

If agency emerges through repositioning rather than regulation, then any system claiming to support agency must be structured around the conditions that make repositioning possible.

ALIO is structured around three required processes:

Meta-awareness

A state of observing one's mental and emotional landscape with detachment, also referred to as "awareness of being aware" or decentering.

It’s the ability to notice internal narratives as patterns rather than facts.

Externalization

A separation the problem from the personal identity of the person, grounded in the idea that the person is not the problem; the problem is the problem. By locating problems as socially and historically constructed influences rather than personal flaws or inherent traits.

Re-authoring

A process of identifying and developing alternative, preferred personal narratives that foreground personal values, skills, and intentions, restoring a sense of agency and authorship.

If AI can scaffold meta-awareness, externalization, repositioning, and preferred-story building, then AI can participate in psychological meaning-making in a supportive, non-authoritative way.

[4] The Core

Why a Computational System

People can recognize that a problem-saturated story is shaping their experience and still remain unable to reposition themselves in relation to it. Insight alone does not guarantee agency when meaning is continuously rehearsed, reinforced, and reabsorbed into identity through cognitive and relational loops. This project asks whether a computational system—rather than a therapist or prescriptive intervention—can help sustain the conditions required for repositioning.

Specifically, whether AI-mediated structures and embodied cues can support meta-awareness, externalization, and re-authoring without interpreting, diagnosing, or authoring meaning on a person’s behalf.

ALIO approaches this challenge by treating AI not as an authority or expert, but as a scaffold that maintains interpretive openness over time, allowing agency to emerge through relation rather than correction.

[5] Primary Research Question

How might an AI-mediated multimodal system scaffold meta-awareness and re-authoring

—so a person can reclaim agency from an internalized, problem-saturated story?

Narrative–Somatic Sequence

[6] Architectural Questions

Narrative–Somatic Architecture

Meta-Awareness

Attention as pattern

Somatic Modulation

Threshold mechanism

Externalization

& Repositioning

Narratives as relational objects

Re-authoring

Preferred meaning consolidation

Enable: Notice capture as pattern

Boundary: No interpretation or authority

Enable: Render meaning as relations

Boundary: No fixing or categorization

Enable: Interrupt loops, stabilize openness

Boundary: No regulation or outcome steering

The central design problem lies in translating narrative therapeutic principles into enforceable system constraints without reducing meaning-making to rules, categories, or outcomes.

Conditions and Constraints

[8] Design Decisions

  • Active

    — Conditions

    D1.

    Meta-awareness without interpretation

    ALIO is designed to surface shifts in narrative capture without interpreting content or assigning meaning. The system treats attention as a pattern to be noticed, not a truth to be explained or corrected.

     

    Design implication

    No semantic inference, diagnosis, or meaning attribution is performed by the system.

    D2.

    Relational externalization

    Dominant stories are externalized into manipulable, object-mediated representations that allow users to reposition themselves in relation to meaning.

     

    Design implication

    Narrative elements remain fluid, reconfigurable, and non-categorical. No fixed labels, taxonomies, or identity claims are imposed.

    D3.

    Somatic cues as threshold mechanisms

    Somatic modulation is used to interrupt automatic narrative loops and stabilize physiological reactivity, creating conditions for interpretive openness.

     

    Design implication

    Cues mark transitions and openings rather than optimize emotional states or direct outcomes.

  • Restrictive

    — Constraints

    D4.

    Functional dependency, not workflow

    Meta-awareness, externalization, and somatic modulation are architecturally interdependent. They form a continuous system linked by functional dependency rather than temporal order.

     

    Design implication

    Users may enter the system at different points, but agency emerges only when all functions remain available.

    D5.

    AI as scaffold and witness

    ALIO rearranges, reflects, and holds relational structures but never generates conclusions on the user’s behalf.

     

    Design implication

    Human authorship over meaning is preserved at every stage of interaction.

    D6.

    Repositioning, not correction

    There is no “right configuration” or optimal narrative state. Insight emerges through shifts in relation, distance, and perspective.

     

    Design implication

    Success is defined by increased capacity for choice, not behavioral compliance or emotional normalization.

[9] Architectural Translation

How design decisions are translated into enforceable system structure

  • No Interpretive Authority

    The system is structurally prevented from assigning meaning, explaining experience, or generating psychological conclusions.

  • Relational Representation Only

    Narratives can exist only as relational structures—nodes, distances, and connections—never as labels or categories.

  • State-Agnostic Somatic Signaling

    Somatic cues mark thresholds and transitions without regulating emotion or converging toward target states.

  • Functional Dependency Without Workflow

    System functions remain interdependent and continuously available rather than sequenced into a prescribed path.

  • Human Authorship Preserved

    The system may rearrange narrative material but cannot generate interpretations or preferred stories.

  • No Optimal Configuration

    No configuration, outcome, or narrative state is treated as correct or final.

[10] System Overview

A Constraint-Driven Multimodal System

ALIO is a system design proposal that explores how AI-mediated, multimodal structures can scaffold personal agency without interpreting, diagnosing, or authoring meaning on a person’s behalf.

 

Not designed to function as a therapeutic product or prescriptive workflow, the project is grounded in enforced constraints that define what the system is structurally permitted to do.

These constraints—non-interpretive behavior, relational representation of narrative, somatic modulation as a threshold mechanism, and preserved human authorship—give rise to a functionally interdependent system rather than a linear sequence. Meaning-making remains distributed across relational and embodied structures, allowing individuals to engage with personal narratives from multiple entry points without converging toward predefined outcomes.

[11-1] System Architecture

A Functionally Interdependent System

ALIO is structured as a functionally interdependent architecture, not a linear process or prescriptive workflow.

Rather than guiding users through a fixed sequence, the system maintains continuous availability of its core functions, allowing meta-awareness, externalization, somatic modulation, and relational witnessing to interact without enforcing order or convergence.

This architecture translates narrative–somatic principles into structural constraints: what the system can support, what it must remain agnostic to, and what it is intentionally prevented from doing.

[11-2] System Architecture

Structural Logic

No module operates independently or in isolation.

Agency emerges not from completion of a sequence, but from the system’s ability to sustain interpretive openness across time, preserving relational distance between identity and meaning while allowing preferred stories to remain accessible, revisitable, and socially acknowledged.

The architecture is intentionally incomplete by design: it cannot generate interpretations, optimize emotional states, or determine narrative outcomes. Its role is to hold conditions, not conclusions.

  • Enforces non-interpretive externalization of narratives
  • Prevents diagnostic labeling and categorical meaning assignment

Externalization Engine

Relational representation layer

Affective Artifact Layer

Somatic threshold mechanism

  • Interrupts automatic narrative loops without emotional regulation
  • Marks transitions and openings rather than directing outcomes

Museum of Agency

Temporal continuity structure

  • Preserves evidence of conscious repositioning over time
  • Avoids closure, resolution, or finalization of meaning

Witness Network

Constrained social scaffold

  • Enables acknowledgment without advice-giving or interpretation
  • Reinforces human authorship through relational witnessing

[12] Key Interaction Flow

User Experience

Diagram (a circular loop diagram with eight evenly spaced nodes)

Cue

Noticing

Naming

Repositioning

Action

Witnessing

Archiving

Integration

Somatic threshold mechanism

→

Cue

Meta-awareness

→

Noticing

Externalization / relational mapping

→

Naming, Repositioning

Agency expression

→

Action

Relational reinforcement

→

Witnessing

Continuity structure

→

Archiving, Integration

“Capabilities, not requirements. Users may enter the loop at any point.”

[13]

Affective Artifacts

Designed as an ecosystem of four distinct but interconnected modules. Each module targets a specific phase of the narrative reconstruction process.

By distributing the therapeutic process across digital sense-making and physical grounding, the system creates a continuous support loop.

Concrete staircase

ALIO Affective Matter Series

backyard of modernist home

scene 1

image

11

close-up of pine needles

scene 2

 

image

22

Design Principles

what ALIO must and must not do

Externalization over introspection

Shift meaning‑making into a relational, object‑mediated space.

Thickening preferred stories

Provide structures that help expand alternative narratives.

Embodied regulation

Use somatic interventions to support cognitive flexibility.

Agency

Design for repositioning, not correction.

-

Ethical Boundaries

Ethical Considerations

ALIO does not diagnose or pathologize. User narratives remain encrypted and locally stored. The system avoids imposing interpretations; instead, it supports users in articulating and thickening their preferred identity conclusions.

Impact

Early evaluations indicate reduced dominance of problem‑saturated interpretations, increased access to alternative stories, improved emotional recovery, and clearer articulation of values and intentions. ALIO demonstrates that interactive systems can operate at the level of meaning‑making, not merely behaviour change.

-

Reflection & Future Direction

Reflection

Building ALIO clarified my direction as a designer–researcher. I am interested in systems that operate at the intersection of narrative meaning, cognitive networks, and embodied experience. ALIO is my first attempt to translate these psychological mechanisms into a concrete interactive system that supports agency under constraint.

Closing

Designing for conscious agency means creating conditions where people can externalize dominant stories, access preferred identity conclusions, and reclaim a sense of identity and agency.

CHLOE PARK

About

Work

CHLOE

PARK

Selected Work

Designing for Conscious Agency

Delicate flowers taped to a wall.

ALIO

A multimodal narrative–somatic system that scaffolds agency by reshaping how people relate to internalized problem narratives.

Overview

ALIO is a research-through-design project that investigates how AI-mediated, multimodal systems can scaffold personal agency by reshaping how people relate to internalized problem narratives without interpreting, diagnosing, or authoring meaning on their behalf, grounded in narrative therapy, cognitive science, and embodied interaction.

ALIO understands agency not as emotional regulation or cognitive control, but as the capacity to externalize, reposition, and re-author one’s relationship to dominant self-stories. The system explores how computational structures and somatic cues can create conditions for this process while preserving human authorship and interpretive autonomy.

Primary Research Question

How might an AI-mediated multimodal system scaffold meta-awareness and re-authoring—so a person can reclaim personal agency from an internalized, problem-saturated story?

Overview

Role

Narrative therapy–informed framework design, research framing, interaction model, system architecture, ethical boundaries

FOCUS

Agency reconstruction through externalization and multimodal scaffolding

Timeline

Ongoing (Mar 2025– )

Outputs

System framework, interaction sequences, diagrams, artifact concepts, interface modules

ALIGNMENT

MIT Media Lab — Cyborg Psychology, Fluid Interfaces, Critical Matter

[1] Origin/Challenge

Where the Problem Emerges

DMN loop

Self

= Problem

Problem-saturated story

ALIO began from a simple but persistent observation: People do not suffer only at the level of emotion or symptom; they suffer when problem-saturated stories become internalized as identity.

The Narrative Therapy Lens

Narrative therapy describes how individuals internalize problem-saturated stories shaped by socio-culturally constructed discourses, relational dynamics, and accumulated experience. Over time, these interpretations consolidate into identity conclusions—thin descriptions that narrow what a person believes is possible for themselves.

The Cognitive Science Layer

From a cognitive science perspective, these self-referential stories are reinforced by the Default Mode Network (DMN), which under stress tends to rehearse familiar narrative loops. When coordination with salience and control networks weakens, attention becomes captured by internal meaning-making, making these stories feel inevitable and self-defining.

At this discursive–neurocognitive intersection, emotional regulation alone is insufficient.What constrains people is not emotion itself, but the relationship between identity and meaning that becomes rigid over time.

 

This is the condition ALIO is designed to intervene in.

[2] Insight

The Moment Agency Returns

Across narrative therapy, a consistent pattern emerges:

Meaningful change does not begin with emotional regulation alone, but when a person can shift their relationship to the problem.

 

Narrative therapy describes this shift as repositioning—the moment when the problem is externalized and alternative stories become visible. Agency returns when meaning is no longer fused with identity, but becomes something a person can relate to, question, and reshape.

[3] What the System Must Support

If agency emerges through repositioning rather than regulation, then any system claiming to support agency must be structured around the conditions that make repositioning possible.

ALIO is structured around three required processes:

Meta-awareness

A state of observing one's mental and emotional landscape with detachment, also referred to as "awareness of being aware" or decentering.

It’s the ability to notice internal narratives as patterns rather than facts.

Externalization

A separation the problem from the personal identity of the person, grounded in the idea that the person is not the problem; the problem is the problem. By locating problems as socially and historically constructed influences rather than personal flaws or inherent traits.

Re-authoring

A process of identifying and developing alternative, preferred personal narratives that foreground personal values, skills, and intentions, restoring a sense of agency and authorship.

If AI can scaffold meta-awareness, externalization, repositioning, and preferred-story building, then AI can participate in psychological meaning-making in a supportive, non-authoritative way.

[4] The Core

Why a Computational System

People can recognize that a problem-saturated story is shaping their experience and still remain unable to reposition themselves in relation to it. Insight alone does not guarantee agency when meaning is continuously rehearsed, reinforced, and reabsorbed into identity through cognitive and relational loops. This project asks whether a computational system—rather than a therapist or prescriptive intervention—can help sustain the conditions required for repositioning.

Specifically, whether AI-mediated structures and embodied cues can support meta-awareness, externalization, and re-authoring without interpreting, diagnosing, or authoring meaning on a person’s behalf.

ALIO approaches this challenge by treating AI not as an authority or expert, but as a scaffold that maintains interpretive openness over time, allowing agency to emerge through relation rather than correction.

[5] Primary Research Question

How might an AI-mediated multimodal system scaffold meta-awareness and re-authoring

—so a person can reclaim agency from an internalized, problem-saturated story?

Narrative–Somatic Sequence

[6] Architectural Questions

Narrative–Somatic Architecture

Meta-Awareness

Attention as pattern

Somatic Modulation

Threshold mechanism

Externalization

& Repositioning

Narratives as relational objects

Re-authoring

Preferred meaning consolidation

Enable: Notice capture as pattern

Boundary: No interpretation or authority

Enable: Render meaning as relations

Boundary: No fixing or categorization

Enable: Interrupt loops, stabilize openness

Boundary: No regulation or outcome steering

The central design problem lies in translating narrative therapeutic principles into enforceable system constraints without reducing meaning-making to rules, categories, or outcomes.

Conditions and Constraints

[8] Design Decisions

  • Active

    — Conditions

    D1.

    Meta-awareness without interpretation

    ALIO is designed to surface shifts in narrative capture without interpreting content or assigning meaning. The system treats attention as a pattern to be noticed, not a truth to be explained or corrected.

     

    Design implication

    No semantic inference, diagnosis, or meaning attribution is performed by the system.

    D2.

    Relational externalization

    Dominant stories are externalized into manipulable, object-mediated representations that allow users to reposition themselves in relation to meaning.

     

    Design implication

    Narrative elements remain fluid, reconfigurable, and non-categorical. No fixed labels, taxonomies, or identity claims are imposed.

    D3.

    Somatic cues as threshold mechanisms

    Somatic modulation is used to interrupt automatic narrative loops and stabilize physiological reactivity, creating conditions for interpretive openness.

     

    Design implication

    Cues mark transitions and openings rather than optimize emotional states or direct outcomes.

  • Restrictive

    — Constraints

    D4.

    Functional dependency, not workflow

    Meta-awareness, externalization, and somatic modulation are architecturally interdependent. They form a continuous system linked by functional dependency rather than temporal order.

     

    Design implication

    Users may enter the system at different points, but agency emerges only when all functions remain available.

    D5.

    AI as scaffold and witness

    ALIO rearranges, reflects, and holds relational structures but never generates conclusions on the user’s behalf.

     

    Design implication

    Human authorship over meaning is preserved at every stage of interaction.

    D6.

    Repositioning, not correction

    There is no “right configuration” or optimal narrative state. Insight emerges through shifts in relation, distance, and perspective.

     

    Design implication

    Success is defined by increased capacity for choice, not behavioral compliance or emotional normalization.

[9] Architectural Translation

How design decisions are translated into enforceable system structure

  • No Interpretive Authority

    The system is structurally prevented from assigning meaning, explaining experience, or generating psychological conclusions.

  • Relational Representation Only

    Narratives can exist only as relational structures—nodes, distances, and connections—never as labels or categories.

  • State-Agnostic Somatic Signaling

    Somatic cues mark thresholds and transitions without regulating emotion or converging toward target states.

  • Functional Dependency Without Workflow

    System functions remain interdependent and continuously available rather than sequenced into a prescribed path.

  • Human Authorship Preserved

    The system may rearrange narrative material but cannot generate interpretations or preferred stories.

  • No Optimal Configuration

    No configuration, outcome, or narrative state is treated as correct or final.

[10] System Overview

A Constraint-Driven Multimodal System

ALIO is a system design proposal that explores how AI-mediated, multimodal structures can scaffold personal agency without interpreting, diagnosing, or authoring meaning on a person’s behalf.

 

Not designed to function as a therapeutic product or prescriptive workflow, the project is grounded in enforced constraints that define what the system is structurally permitted to do.

These constraints—non-interpretive behavior, relational representation of narrative, somatic modulation as a threshold mechanism, and preserved human authorship—give rise to a functionally interdependent system rather than a linear sequence. Meaning-making remains distributed across relational and embodied structures, allowing individuals to engage with personal narratives from multiple entry points without converging toward predefined outcomes.

[11-1] System Architecture

A Functionally Interdependent System

ALIO is structured as a functionally interdependent architecture, not a linear process or prescriptive workflow.

Rather than guiding users through a fixed sequence, the system maintains continuous availability of its core functions, allowing meta-awareness, externalization, somatic modulation, and relational witnessing to interact without enforcing order or convergence.

This architecture translates narrative–somatic principles into structural constraints: what the system can support, what it must remain agnostic to, and what it is intentionally prevented from doing.

[11-2] System Architecture

Structural Logic

No module operates independently or in isolation.

Agency emerges not from completion of a sequence, but from the system’s ability to sustain interpretive openness across time, preserving relational distance between identity and meaning while allowing preferred stories to remain accessible, revisitable, and socially acknowledged.

The architecture is intentionally incomplete by design: it cannot generate interpretations, optimize emotional states, or determine narrative outcomes. Its role is to hold conditions, not conclusions.

  • Enforces non-interpretive externalization of narratives
  • Prevents diagnostic labeling and categorical meaning assignment

Externalization Engine

Relational representation layer

Affective Artifact Layer

Somatic threshold mechanism

  • Interrupts automatic narrative loops without emotional regulation
  • Marks transitions and openings rather than directing outcomes

Museum of Agency

Temporal continuity structure

  • Preserves evidence of conscious repositioning over time
  • Avoids closure, resolution, or finalization of meaning

Witness Network

Constrained social scaffold

  • Enables acknowledgment without advice-giving or interpretation
  • Reinforces human authorship through relational witnessing

[12] Key Interaction Flow

User Experience

Diagram (a circular loop diagram with eight evenly spaced nodes)

Cue

Noticing

Naming

Repositioning

Action

Witnessing

Archiving

Integration

Somatic threshold mechanism

→

Cue

Meta-awareness

→

Noticing

Externalization / relational mapping

→

Naming, Repositioning

Agency expression

→

Action

Relational reinforcement

→

Witnessing

Continuity structure

→

Archiving, Integration

“Capabilities, not requirements. Users may enter the loop at any point.”

[13]

Affective Artifacts

Designed as an ecosystem of four distinct but interconnected modules. Each module targets a specific phase of the narrative reconstruction process.

By distributing the therapeutic process across digital sense-making and physical grounding, the system creates a continuous support loop.

Concrete staircase

ALIO Affective Matter Series

backyard of modernist home

scene 1

image

11

close-up of pine needles

scene 2

 

image

22

Design Principles

what ALIO must and must not do

Externalization over introspection

Shift meaning‑making into a relational, object‑mediated space.

Thickening preferred stories

Provide structures that help expand alternative narratives.

Embodied regulation

Use somatic interventions to support cognitive flexibility.

Agency

Design for repositioning, not correction.

-

Ethical Boundaries

Ethical Considerations

ALIO does not diagnose or pathologize. User narratives remain encrypted and locally stored. The system avoids imposing interpretations; instead, it supports users in articulating and thickening their preferred identity conclusions.

Impact

Early evaluations indicate reduced dominance of problem‑saturated interpretations, increased access to alternative stories, improved emotional recovery, and clearer articulation of values and intentions. ALIO demonstrates that interactive systems can operate at the level of meaning‑making, not merely behaviour change.

-

Reflection & Future Direction

Reflection

Building ALIO clarified my direction as a designer–researcher. I am interested in systems that operate at the intersection of narrative meaning, cognitive networks, and embodied experience. ALIO is my first attempt to translate these psychological mechanisms into a concrete interactive system that supports agency under constraint.

Closing

Designing for conscious agency means creating conditions where people can externalize dominant stories, access preferred identity conclusions, and reclaim a sense of identity and agency.