The UX of Human Senses

Ava Shepherd
Oct 18, 2021
4 min read

Updated: Mar 3, 2022

Our first brief for MA User Experience, University of the Arts London!

Designers: Anya Li, Effy Liu, Sofia Alexiou, Zhe Lou, Ava Shepherd

Brief

The goal of this project was to design a tool that enables people to access the invisible, the unmeasurable and the intangible parts of London. Over the course of one week we needed to explore London, prototype ways of seeing the invisible and experiment with final concepts.

Week 1

Exploration

In class this week we discussed the value of human senses and our innate ability to detect small and subtle changes in the environment around us. Additionally, with technology advancing we are also no longer restrained to only our natural senses. We are now able to also detect elements of the world that affect us, but we can not always pinpoint (Radio waves, radiation, and wifi) (Connor, 2006, p.23).

At this stage our group was very unsure as what we wanted to explore so we decided it would be best to just meet and see what happens -not overthink it! We met at 10am on Friday in the streets of Spitalfields and began recording anything and everything we believed could be interesting. We wanted to experiment with how we notice the 5 main senses: Touch, Sight, Sound, Smell and Taste.

Additionally, we decided to record our movements around the city.

Outcome

After experimenting we stopped to regroup and discuss all the different things we noticed. It was during this conversation that we realised we actually wanted to focus on how we could experiment seeing the invisible of London without using our main senses. What if we relied on other senses? - How does time pass? What is our perception of personal space? How do we feel in different landscapes?

Conceptualising our idea

Over the weekend we met online to discuss how we envisioned our project to go. We decided to focus on personal space in London and the different emotions it causes.

For our first idea we wanted to use paint to represent emotions. We wanted to have someone walk through strips covered in paint so that the more they get hit the more paint they get covered in. This was to show people invading your personal space. While we liked this we were worried about the execution.

From this we decided to develop our idea and create a device that would read peoples body temperature and heart rate to determine how they were feeling in different areas of London with various levels of personal space (E.g. Anxious, happy, stressed, sad). This device would then produce a colour onto the wall that correlated with their emotion at the time. We would draw on traditional colour theory for this. "We conventionally associate anger with red, green with envy and blue with sadness" (Simmons, 2011. p.395).

However once speaking to John in a tutorial on Tuesday we quickly realised this was not the right concept for us. Using devices like these would not only be challenging to make, but also makes assumptions about the individual using it. When the device generates a colour for the user, based off of their body response it is assuming why they are reacting like that when it could be incorrect. E.g. A fast heartbeat could be interpreted as stressed when the user could be happy and excited.

New direction

We really liked playing with the idea of personal space and decided to carry on with the idea but in a completely new light. We decided that our bodies could be our main instrument and that we would act out different scenes demonstrating personal space in London. This was a real turning point for our group. As soon as we came up with this idea, for the first time we could all clearly visualise the outcome in our heads and had the same interpretation of the concept, which had never happened with previous ideas. We were therefore able to begin planning our scenes and layout of the experience straight away and with little complications.

Presentation!

On Thursday we then presented this experience to the class for the first time. We asked two people to come up and participate in our experience while the rest of the class watched from a far. We were very nervous about presenting at this stage as we had only practiced our scene a few times and this was the first week of class and did not know what others work would be like.

Feedback and Reflections

We received very positive feedback from this experience by both our peers and teachers. We were told that it felt very natural and easy which is often very hard to stage. Even though we never stated what any of the scenes were in London, both the participants and class could clearly tell we were recreating a tube, a park and a restaurant.

May, who was one of the participants said that the recreation of the tube gave her the same sense of claustrophobia that she had on her way to university this morning.

Overall I really enjoyed this project. I think it was a great introduction to what the term is going to look like and gave us a sense of how we will work in groups. This project really illustrated to me the importance of being able to adapt as your idea changes and the importance of experimentation. While our first idea was not the right path for us with the device, it was what lead us to our final outcome.

Finally this project showed me that often the simplest ideas are the most effective. Going forward this is crucial to keep in mind and to try and not over complicate our experiences.