Brief 3: UX OF hair
- 25 janv. 2023
- 6 min de lecture
Dernière mise à jour : 27 janv. 2023
Group 9: Romit Khurd, Tanya Singh, Weiting Chi, Harry Solomons, Cristèle Saric
Design a way to intensify how we experience human hair.
Research: finding and understanding hair
A crucial part of our design process was to fundamentally understand hair as a concept. We started off the project by creating two conceptual frameworks to evaluate hair's purpose in a political, societal, sensory, and cultural context. We found that this helped us weed out topics and research questions we might not be interested in.
Expanded research 1: challenges with directed storytelling
Due to the broadness of the brief, we found that directed storytelling would be the best way to get a more detailed insight into hair as a concept. From our understanding of our research, we found that hair can be an incredibly personal aspect of someone's identity, gender, religion, or beliefs. We proceeded to interview people in our inner circles with different experiences with hair. We, unfortunately, found that although gaining insight into people's experiences with hair was insightful to an extent, the subjectivity of hair made it complex for us to find an easier research question that wasn't so delicate of a topic.
Expanded research 2: the success of body storming
Regardless of the challenge presented by our results from the directed storytelling, we decided to go ahead and test out the experience of hair as a purely sensory experience and experiment. With an almost even number of males and females in our team, we considered simulating the experience of going to the hairdresser and manipulating the senses of our testees by using using a razor, a wig, haircut sounds, and a ''mirror''. We found that even as a sensory experience, hair as a concept is packed with gendered expectations. When we tested on Romit, he had little to no reaction to the sound of the razor even with his eyes closed.
When we tested on Tanya however, she was visibly more uncomfortable at the thought of a stranger touching her hair. The sound of the razor was particularly stressful, and she explained that she was uncomfortable because of how unused to the sound she is.
We found that even as she was viewing her reflection, she was increasingly weary of what I was doing to her hair, even though I wasn't actually touching it.
We came up with the following conclusions from our first body-storming research:
- Hair is a gendered experience
- Hair as a sensory experience can also be heavily influenced by an individual's experience based on childhood, memories, and the frequency of visiting a hairdresser.
Prototyping: ideation of prototype 1
Although the conclusions from our body storming were interesting, we still struggled to consider other ways in which we could expand the experience of hair. We found that returning to our initial conceptual frameworks was useful to solve the issue, and it led us to consider hair in different parts of the body. This led us to ideate prototypes that would experiment with hair as a sensory experience in different areas of the body where it would be odd to have any.
Following our tutorials in which we presented we decided to develop multiple items of clothing that would contain hair in weirder areas of the body like the hands and feet for our interim presentation.
Prototyping: challenges of making of prototype 1
We decided to combine different sensory experiences to trigger the hair within the clothing items. For our initial interim presentation, we chose vibrations. Due to the difficulty of the task and our limited abilities as a team to fully convey the variety of different sensations, the materials used within the glove which we found out was disrupting the functioning of the vibrating sensor, the full scope of what we were trying to produce was incredibly limited.
User testing & interim feedback
Although we had temporarily fixed our issues with the materials, we found that the vibrations of the sensors were very dependent on people's own skin sensitivities. Our users (fig. ) upon testing the product all had mixed reviews on the sensation when wearing the glove, and the combination of hair and glue was a little too icky.
Upon presenting the final product, we were advised to go back to our initial stages of research, particularly the hairdresser simulator test to uncover the potential of a second prototype that would be easier to produce.
Prototype 2: Returning to body storming
We decided to start from 0 in our process and did some thinking. We found that part of our problem was that we were too locked into the idea that hair was solely a human experience. Although we'd considered the how and why of hair, we hadn't considered external interactions with hair and their experience with it. Within the scope of human hair, we found that the externalisation of hair was made by its experience/interaction with other objects or things.
The direct link we found and questioned was the interaction of hair lice on human hair. We found that from the perspective of an insect like lice, hair is experienced and extended beyond its own scale and as an external object. Although this was an interesting jump in our design thinking and what we were used to, we found that not many other projects took human hair from an experience that is different to humans.
We, therefore, started over with a body storm experience of crawling like a bug inside a plastic tunnel which would replicate the vision of hair lice in hair later on in the project.
Prototype 2: Research & collecting insects
Following the presentation of our second prototype idea, we were advised that observational research into the functioning of insects in interactions with human hair was necessary to build a realistic experience. The team, therefore, ventured out to collect whatever bugs we could find that would be easily found during that time of the year.
To also gain a better understanding of hair's consistency from the perspective of hair lice, we looked at a hair under a microscope. To understand an insect's interaction with human hair, one of our members kindly shaved some of their beard hair for the project.
conclusions from our observations of the ladybirds' interaction with the hair:
- the insects were heavily interacting with it
- they were climbing over and inside the bundles of hair
Prototype 2: Development of the tunnel
The making of the immersive hair lice experience was the hardest part of the project. We particularly struggled to find items that would feel like hair from the scale and perspective of hair lice and scalp. To solve the issue, we were lucky to use a variety of materials that felt particular to the touch. For the strands of hair for example. we used nylon tights which emulated best the scale of hair by comparison to hair lice. Because the tunnel would be dark inside, we found that using smells like the scent of shampoo on the hair strands and the sounds of scalp scratching would enhance the immersion for our users.
User testing & feedback
As hair lice develop by laying eggs on the scalp, we decided to assign a task to our users when navigating the tunnel. We purchased small light bulbs which would resemble lice eggs and asked our users to attach the ''eggs'' to the hair. This would in turn light up the inside of the tunnel, presenting a well-lit passage for our users to navigate, as seen in fig.. Upon testing the tunnel with our unsuspecting users, we received positive feedback about the overall experience. One of the issues encountered was that some of our users couldn't quite snell the shampoo, but this was easily solved by applying more on the strands.
Final results of prototype 2
Because the brief stated that the goal of the project was to expand the experience of hair, to enhance the realism of our tunnel, we stuck wigs on the exterior of the tunnel linking them to the strands of hair on the inside so as to replicate hair from the scalp expanding towards the outside.
Reflections on the project & feedback
We received incredibly positive feedback on the final presentation. we were faced with the challenge of presenting online, however, but as a solution to this, we filmed live one of the team members going through the tunnel which the rest of the class was able to experience. The project showed that research in the field of design informs the end product and that designing is in fact a fluid process that isn't always linear.
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