UX OF WARMTH

Chaitanya Tiwari

Anushka Monteiro

Cindy Zhang

Jin Wang

 Brief: design and emotional experience of warmth.

There was an interesting lecture on Weasley Goatly’s work. My illness returned with a vengeance this week, so I was unable to participate much in some of the brainstorming and the first/second iteration of bodystorming. They were looking at the negative effects of heat exposure in relation to health and mood. For bodystorming, my team created a small enclosure to trap people in to see how they experienced the heat. The first iteration had the complicating factor of the group knowing each other, all being in the same group and seeing the seclusion as positive. They then made a booth for individuals, and people rated their mood over the progression of time.

However, the feedback was that the emoji was not a sufficient record of the experience. They also tried to do the behaviour mapping at the university entrance; expected behaviour was limited because of the transitory nature of the place, as people rarely stuck around to exhibit any behaviour and moved off to class or home immediately. I interviewed a doctor I know about the medical effects of heat to try to gain more insights. I attempted a new behavioural mapping on a rush-hour post-game London train on the weekend. However, I took notes rather than sketching and should have also made a behaviour-over-time illustration. I made some interesting observations, though, the key things being that groups of friends did not feel the heat as much (happy facial expressions, laughing, talking) or felt comfortable with taking off coats whether they left the train sooner or later. Individual older men looked the most uncomfortable (red, unhappy faces, huffing). They exhibited a range of nonverbal behaviours that were more honest illustrations of their feelings than any polite exchanges I heard.

We decided to then create a new body-storming experience exploring nonverbal/verbal cues indicating discomfort and frustration and how relationships affect endurance. The set-up was a lift. Each group had a different characterization, e.g. in a friendship group, late for work, etc., non-participants got on crowding the space as the lift went up, and then it broke down before ending. Findings: people didn’t like to talk with strangers; however, when with friends, people were more likely to try to problem-solve or engage in mitigation behaviours, such as fanning faces, etc.

After looking at some research suggested by Jeanna on Native American sweat lodges, I also looked into Marina Abramović’s: ‘The Artist is Present’ piece. We then chose to go ahead with a heat endurance experience where we heated a room just big enough for two people with a table enclosed with heaters and a projection of frames to add a psychological implication of heat. We asked people to stay in for a period of time (different with each iteration). We asked participants to communicate nonverbally in order to be more authentic and form another barrier to overcome together. We tried to get participants who didn’t know each other very well to see if they formed a bond after the experience. Some participants did, some did not, which could indicate that the different iterations and prompts affected how people experienced this.

We used heat to create a experience that causes discomfort but allows participants to cope with it by communicating their emotional state more so figure out how to cope together leading to an emotional bond.