UX of Skin: Skin V World — Week 2
Nov 18, ’21 — Nov 25, ‘21
Task: Design a way to express the skin/world interface.
Group: Prashanthi Balachander, Dora Alvarez, Anya Li, Jacob Tomes and me (Ranga)
For our second week we tried to build upon our ideas that we had presented during the interim presentation. The issue was that our previous week’s idea was on shaky ground. We had to rethink our idea from scratch. Through the speed dating process we gathered that the idea of stimulating skin on different parts of our body was perhaps the best way to demonstrate the concept. For this, we decided to not restrict ourself to the face and instead create a full body suit that would enable the user to understand just how sensitive skin is. For this we used the two point discrimination method which told us exactly how sensitive relative to each other the different parts of our body were, and from then onwards we had to create a bodysuit.
There were two steps to creating the bodysuit. The first step was understanding what part of body was sensitive and which ones we had to stimulate. The second step was using materials such as a fake wig, sponges, uncooked pasta, sandpaper and other stuff. Materials were stuck on the inside and outside of the suit so both the wearer and anyone who chose to hug them would feel the materials.
The most important part was making sure that the suit actually worked and was sufficiently stimulating to the wearer. To this purpose, my group partner wore the suit and was sufficiently irritated by certain materials but did not really feel affected by certain other pleasurable materials on the inside of the suit. That meant that negative stimulus was much more effective than pleasurable feeling when it came to acknowledging presence.
After we tried on the suit we decided to switch up some of the placement of the materials on the inside to increase the effectiveness. The second version of the sword was tested by myself, and although it felt nice to the touch, the sandpaper that was stuck on the inside was painful.
To accurately demonstrate the skin/world interface we decided that the internal materials would be in direct contact with the primary users skin. We did not test the suit on anyone else before the presentation because we wanted to make sure that our volunteer would be experiencing the suit for the very first time and would not have any preconceived notions. There were multiple complaints about how painful some of the materials inside of the suit were, but we noticed that there really was no acknowledgement of the materials inside the suit that felt nice.
The hugging process was particularly enlightening because in the wearer felt the effects of the skin/world interface a lot more than the person who hugged him. This fit along our idea that every user usually feels the effect of any interface along skin more than (obviously) the person who is wearing clothes.
Takeaways: It’s okay to switch ideas and go in a different direction if it is for the good of the brief. Stay open-minded.
