UX OF THE SENSES

Wanrui Ren

Yiyao lu

Yulanxi Jiang (Lancy)

Shivangi Gadhoke

Brief : Reflect the human senses in a wearable design.

Festival Hall, Tonisha led a guided meditation I was surprised about how noises connected with me emotionally, I liked visualising them into shapes and imagining what caused them. Asked to walk 10mins, I drew the walk there trying to get into the spirit of Guy Debord's Derive.

We took photos and videos, drew and mind-mapped with the others. Mainly struck with a sense of vertigo, the movement of the bridge in the wind, the motion of the river and the architecture gave quite a weird feeling that was interesting. reflecting the vestibular sense and proprioception in an arm cuff, which would sway with movement and be attracted to other cuff wearers when nearby. I unfortunately wasn’t there for the presentation due to work commitments, but I heard feedback was that there was too much going on with the two senses.

In the second week, we were given the location at Twinning’s tea shop. When we visited the location, I was struck by the strong scent of tea, which the air-conditioning must pump in. Products packaged like sweets, go from low prices at the front to highly specialised products and experiences at the back. It had many interactive stations that worked on multiple senses (audio, visual, motion-activated, taste, smell), teaching the viewer about the history/personal story of the brand. I interviewed one of the store ambassadors about the store and she said that its history is very important.

We chose to reflect on the sense of smell and its relation to the Proustian effect (evoking memory from smell) (Proust,1913). The design we then made consisted of a jacket that the wearer could create memory capsules that could be opened. The scent of that moment would explode with little mementoes to evoke the memory. Friends and family could make capsules for each other to remember them, and one could link particular memories together grouped by colour and design.

I felt it was important for our design to reflect the three cultures of the group and the history of the tea trade, crossing China, India and England. So, I fashioned the main body of the wearable jacket into three distinct parts influenced by the store's design, cultural costumes, and tea farming. Lancy and Shivangi made the technical pop-out functions, and Yiyao made the drawn elements of the evoked memories.

Teamwork was difficult due to a personality clash, so it was sometimes hard to navigate sharing ideas and committing to a direction forward. Our tutorial helped end a few stalemates, but ultimately, we just started making things separately. They went together nicely in the end.