Phenomenologically Grounded Design of IoHT Spaces: Socioenactive Knowledge Creation Through Socially Aware Design

The Internet of Things (IoT) increasingly shapes human environments, yet a systematic review found few studies positioning people as constitutive participants rather than peripheral users. This paper introduces the Internet of Human Things (IoHT), a phenomenologically grounded framework centering humans in socioenactive spaces where social, physical, and digital dimensions couple continuously. Using the Socially Aware Design (SAwD) methodology and Engelland’s categories of World, Flesh, and Truth, we conducted four participatory design workshops in a hospital (2018; 14 children aged 7–11) and a school for neurodivergent students (2023), bridged by a pandemic-era remote phase. The resulting object taxonomy, organized along data-direction, manipulability, and infrastructure-role dimensions, serves as a situated design instrument. The socioenactive cycle enacts all four modes of Nonaka and Takeuchi’s SECI model, extending knowledge-creation theory into embodied, technology-mediated experience. IoHT contributes a phenomenological vocabulary and a design process for socioenactive knowledge creation in human-centered IoT environments.