UX of Disguise - Week 1

Brief

Design a way to manipulate and deceive perceptual recognition.

Team-mates

Jumleena Bhagawati, Ruoxi Song, Reagan Bbengo, Hong Zhou & Sushil Suresh

Date

13/10/22 - 20/10/22

Image taken from Unsplash.

Welcome to UX of Disguise, week 1. For this project, we were asked to identify what, or who, to disguise, and why. We determined where and in what circumstances the disguise will work and who, or what is unable to perceive what is disguised. We were encouraged to explore, explode, and exploit processes, criticality, and interaction in relation to user experience design. We were asked to use two distinct research methods, Artefact analysis, and Data physicalization.

In this blog post, I have presented my documentation of our observation, research, and prototype-building process that we did as a team of 5 on the project "UX of Disguise". I have also discussed the feedback received on the prototype and my reflection on the week's work at the end of the post.

- Timeline -

- Seeking out the illusions -

When we started discussing the topic of disguise we spoke vividly about how optical illusions can disguise forms and shapes. Within visual perception, an optical illusion is an illusion caused by the visual system and characterized by a visual percept that arguably appears to differ from reality. For experimentation, we tried to re-create the famous 3D dino whose eyes are supposed to follow as you rotate the structure.

Video of us trying to analyze how optical illusion could work in 3d structures.

However, we also noted down our other ideas and concepts related to disguise.

List of our idea from miro.

- Observation -

We determined we wanted to pursue the topic of the disguise of emotions and space (with the help of illusion). We wanted to create a space that is hidden in between illusions, where we wanted people with social anxiety to be able to escape to a crowded setting if need be. We chose the topic of social anxiety because while talking about the disguise of emotion, we discovered that everyone in our team has social anxiety to some degree to other.

How common are mental health problems?

• 1 in 4 people will experience a mental health problem of some kind each year in England [McManus, S. et al, 2009].

• 1 in 6 people report experiencing a common mental health problem (like anxiety and depression) in any given week in England [McManus S,2014].

Research methods

For data physicalization, we made a questionnaire on the effect of social anxiety on people, and then we sent it out to people in our class to fill up their answers. Then using the data gathered we represented it in a physical form.

Image showing our data physicalization.

For the artifact analysis, we analyzed the mirror, as it was a key component of our illusion-building process.

Image showing the screenshot of our miro board.

- Design Process -

Brainstorming & Sketching

We decide to disguise a room in a public space for people with anxiety, where they could escape to and relax in case of a breakdown.

We started by building a small-scale version of our prototype. In order to create the illusion, we added a panel in the back in a zig-zag fashion. We then added five cardboard extensions into the corners of the back panel. The panel had a pattern and we made a secret room-like enclosure with a door (that was made of a reflective material, ideally a mirror) in one of the corners of the back panel so that the room gets lost within the pattern.

Image of the prototype sketch.

Challenge

While trying to build the prototype we faced challenges in terms of trying to replicate a life-sized version of our design. However, we wanted to first receive feedback on our design and then decide if our idea would be worth pursuing or not, before replicating it in a bigger size.

Our second challenge was to find a way to design the room so that it was lost within the striped pattern that we created.

Goal

By doing so we tried to momentarily resolve the issue of social anxiety by creating an invisible room for them to relax in a room full of people.

- Prototype -

To create the illusion, we added a panel in the back in a zig-zag fashion. We then added five cardboard extensions into the corners of the back panel. The panel at the back had a striped pattern. Our intention was to find a way to design the room so that it was lost within the striped pattern.

Image of the prototype sketch.

- Feedback -

Finishing the initial week, our prototype was presented to our classmates in UAL. The concept for our prototype remained doubtful to the audience. The fact that the prototype was a small-scale version, made the prototype in-experience in real-time, which greatly affected the feedback

After seeing the demonstration the class came up with the following insights to help us with our concept and design further down the road: 1. There was too much focus on anxiety. Our concept seemed like we were trying to resolve issues of social anxiety. 2. The idea of having a separate room in disguise for anxious people would most likely attract more attention to it causing our concept to fail in real life. 3. Having a small room could alleviate anxiety. However, if the door to the enclosure instead of being a one way mirror could act like a too-way mirror, the room could work under certain conditions.

- Evaluation -

The brief "UX of disguise" was extremely interesting as from that topic we could iterate so many ideas. We decided to combine the concept of designing for space and designing for emotion together to build a prototype for people with anxiety. The design would allow the people to escape and relax in case of a breakdown. However, after the presentation, we as a group came to the realization that we were putting too much focus on the issue of social anxiety rather than the actual brief. Thus, we realized the need to re-group, re-tract, and re-analyze our concept for the upcoming week.

-Reference-

McManus, S., Meltzer, H., Brugha, T. S., Bebbington, P. E., & Jenkins, R. (2009). Adult psychiatric morbidity in England, 2007: results of a household survey.

McManus S, Bebbington P, Jenkins R, Brugha T. (eds.) (2016). Mental health and wellbeing in England: Adult psychiatric morbidity survey 2014.