The UX of Skin (Part 1 of 2) — UX Studio Practices

The seminar on the UX of skin afforded a learning on how the skins of various living beings serve beyond their basic integumentary function. Skin helps to maintain homeostasis of the inner world; redesigns itself in the form of muscles and wings to facilitate locomotion and can be generated artificially, mimicked from the models of nature.

Team : Luchen Peng, Sanjana Mehta, Sanya Nayar and Tatiana Bohsali

The brief that followed afterwards prompted us to think, firstly about the ways we experience the world through our own skins which were otherwise hidden into oblivion and secondly, about the aspects of cultural and literary representations.

Entangled with thoughts in our own heads, we as a group decided to let them loose by doing a brainstorming session together at the college which resulted in listing out a few pathways that could be pursued for the project.

As Luchen was still self-isolating, we contacted her on a Zoom call.

In action : brainstorming session when all of us got together at the college.

Thereafter, having arrived at some clarity, we retreated back to our caves to think independently about the solutions.

IDEAS

I explored some of the limitations and allowances presented by the physical properties of the human skin before formulating conceptual ideas.

i.1] Skin indicates geography of the human body informed by the different textures that can be felt distinctively owing to topological differences.

i.2] Skin also undergoes ageing which causes changes in these textures. The textures can be traced for memories along the journey of one’s life thus evoking nostalgia.

i.1 (left ) and i.2 (right)

i.3] Skin is made up of tissues that continually expand and contract over time. The abdominal walls during pregnancy expand to encompass progeny to enable reproduction. This is afforded by its property of laxity.

i.4] Due to the chemical composition of tissues, skin has susceptibility to chemical and physical changes hence embedding vulnerability that we face from the external world.

i.3 (left) and i.4 (right)

CONCEPTS

Having explored the physicality of skin, I combined one or more ideas together to come up with some concepts as listed below.

c.1] Skin as a gateway to permit interactions : Idiom that characterises a person as being ‘thick-skinned’ or ‘thin-skinned’ has its root in the 16th century English world where it originally started being used for referring to rind of fruits and vegetables. Thick-skinned is seen as someone who is unreceptive on one end of the spectrum to being insensitive on the other. Similarly, being thin-skinned can also be interpreted from showing openness and obedience to an extremity of gullibility. Here, skin is seen as a permeable membrane which allows exchange of ideas.

c.2] Skin as an index of guardianship : Skin informs the age of the body more visibly than other organs. Age is a manifestation of cumulative exposure with the outer world and thus fairly proportional to survival wisdom. Hence, skin is a representative for guardianship by which emotional connection is established with other human beings who are able to perceive the physical embodiment of wisdom when they see, touch, smell or taste it.

PROPOSITIONS BY THE OTHER TEAMMATES

Other very interesting ideas were brought to the table by rest of the teammates.

t.1] Sanjana described skin to be a notification system alerting distinct feelings on specific locations of the body, as revealed after conducting a survey.

t.2] Luchen illustrated how skin acts as a recording instrument showing interactions with the outer world through callus and body scars.

t.3] Tatiana talked about fragility of the skin and our need to make cautious movements like in a maze in order to prevent touching any external element, which is especially relevant in the current time of a global pandemic.

t.1, t.2 and t.3 (from left to right)

A collective mind-map penned down by Tatiana representing the selected pathways

We compiled these ideas for our interim presentation on 05/Nov in class. The tutors, Alaistair and John (via a Zoom call) remarked that despite finding the idea of a maze game fascinating, it was being restrictive by only portraying germaphobes or those struck by a pandemic. They also commented that organising questionnaires with an unclassified audience was not the correct method of determining how the skin reacted to feelings. Nonetheless, we were encouraged that theme of linking skin with propagation bore richness as a metaphorical concept and should be explored further for physical implementation in a prototype.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kellett, H. (2017) ‘Skin Portraiture: Embodied Representations in Contemporary Art’, Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. Available at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/4567.

Kelly, J. (2016) The Origins of 19 ‘Skin’ Expressions. Available at: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/81624/origins-19-skin-expressions (Accessed: 31 October 2020).

Marsh, A. (2019) Hasbro’s Classic Game Operation Was Sparked by a Grad Student’s Electric Idea — IEEE Spectrum. Available at: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/space-age/hasbros-classic-game-operation-was-sparked-by-a-grad-students-electric-idea (Accessed: 31 October 2020).