30th October - 6th November
Group D: Manali Panchal, Eric Dodd, Kate Chernysheva, Eda Erdal
Group D: Manali Panchal, Eric Dodd, Kate Chernysheva, Eda Erdal
brief: design a way to express the skin world interface
Like the first brief we worked on, this project also came as a confusion at first. I struggled to fully understand the true meaning behind the word combination skin/world interface. Hence that became a starting point for me.
A sketch I created while trying to unpack the brief.
Process
Unfortunately, our group didn’t get a smooth start to this project. One of our group members faced serious issues and wasn’t able to get in touch with us to organise a meeting. As we weren’t sure what was happening, we hesitated and it took us some time to meet up for the first time. Sadly, later we discovered that she was unable to join this project.
Meanwhile, we started off with doing some individual preliminary research.
Some of our findings included cultural views on the skin, how skin reacts to pressure, different temperatures as well as what happens when skin itches, tickles, gets touched. We learnt about different skin layers, thermal receptors, skin components and regular processes.
Some of the research sketches. Created by Manali.
We firstly gathered together online to share our findings and break down the brief. Upon discussion and further exploration, we began to brainstorm our ideas.
Sketches and initial ideas created during our first online meeting. Created by Kate.
Our next meeting was in person, where we looked into our initial ideas in more depth and detail.
Initial Idea
The idea we decided to go with focused on the skin as medium humans utilise to receive information. Such as temperature, touch, textures, etc. In order to accomplish that we thought of creating a narrative within which individuals could experience that information receiving through their skin.
We wanted to bring a familiar environment into the classroom through different objects which would help people understand and guess the setting we had in mind. This is to show that there is so much information around us that we actually perceive with a touch and through our skin. Bearing in mind the world situation we wanted to pick a setting that everyone was familiar with and perhaps something that was sorely missed and reminded people of life before the pandemic. Hence, we thought a restaurant had a variety of objects and textures we were looking for.
Reflection
Upon our work-in-progress presentation, we realised that our idea didn’t hit the brief as much as we thought. It lacked the originality and focused too much on the narrative. Another thing that our presentation was missing was a physical prototype as well as evidence of testing. This was due to the fact that we wanted for the experience to be a surprise and present it in the final week of the project. However, we used this presentation as a learning opportunity which highlighted to us the importance of feedback and physical visualisation and testing. Furthermore, it emphasised to me how crucial it is to document our research and development to be able to reflect and evolve.
As a result, we carried on our search for a final idea.
Notes taken from the feedback we were given on our work and sketches on potential improvement. Sketches created by Kate.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Merriam-webster.com. (2019). Definition of INTERFACE. [online] Available at: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/interface.[Accessed 10 Jan. 2021].
Stromberg, J. (2015). 9 surprising facts about the sense of touch. [online] Vox. Available at: https://www.vox.com/2015/1/28/7925737/touch-facts. [Accessed 10 Jan. 2021].
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