Brief
Design a way to intensify how we experience human hair
Team-mates
Jumleena Bhagawati, Changlin Hou (Charlie), Manfredi Montaretto, Linjia Fang
Date
3/10/22 - 10/11/22
Welcome to UX of Hair, week 2. For this project, we worked to explore and design a way to intensify how we experience human hair. For this week we will seek to further explore the cultural significance of hair (both in its presence and absence) by investigating its place in contemporary society and culture. We were asked to use two distinct research methods, bodystorming and directed storytelling in our project.
In this blog post, I have presented my documentation of our observation, research, and prototype-building process that we did as a team of 4 on the project "UX of Hair". 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 -
- Recap -
In the first week of the brief, we observed how much of a significance hair has as it can influence others' perceptions of us and we explored what changes in its absence.
- New idea generation -
Hair is groomed, manipulated, shaped, collected, and also traded. Kobena Mercer states in a much-quoted article, hair is “never a straightforward biological ‘fact’ because it is almost always groomed, prepared, cut, concealed and generally ‘worked upon’ by human hands. Such practices socialize hair, making it the medium of significant ‘statements’ about self and society and the codes of value that bind them, or don’t” (Mercer, 1987: 34).
For week 2 we tried to envision a society where hair holds no such burden and cultural significance, hair without its statements of rebellion or submission. But the idea of hair as a symbol of pure liberation from society and culture as a whole.
Directed storytelling results:
When our-team-mate Manfredi got a chance to interviewe his hippie friends when he went back to Barcelona for the weekend.When he asked them what their hair long with dreads signifies to them, evidently, they all replied, "Love for nature."
Photo of Manfredi's hippie friends, courtesy of
Manfredi.
For developing this prototype we took inspiration from the works of Larsen Warner, Vvalerie Blass, Patrik Demarchelier, and his son Victor Demarchelier on hair. We found the length, ruggedness, and sheer nonchalance of the designs very alluring.
Photos of hair art that we as a team were inspired by.
After that, we body-stormed with fake hair to get the experience of having long hair.
The above picture shows our teammates along with a volunteer, Bin, trying out different long hairstyles.
- Design Process -
Brainstorming & Working on the Design
We knew we wanted our hair sculpture to look very natural as if it was pulled out of nature by someone. We wanted it to be a version of hair that was very different from the groomed polished look of man-touched hair. wanted to go to the park to collect leaves.
Our team-mate Charlie's body stormed with the unfinished prototype and tried to experience it out in nature.
After we were done body-storming we realized in order to make the hair more liberating and less structured, we rolled it on grass and let it get tangled into a long dread.
Challenge
During this brief we faced no challenges worth mentioning.
Goal
We tried to reflect an image of hair where hair holds no such burden and cultural significance, hair without its statements of rebellion or submission. But the idea of hair as a symbol of pure liberation, from society and culture as a whole.
- Prototype -
We decided to use the well gallery to document the prototype in a better light.
Video of our team and a volunteer trying out the prototype
The final pictures of our prototype can be seen in the image down below.
Final photos of our team and a volunteer trying out the prototype
- Evaluation & Feedback -
Finishing the final week, our prototype was presented by our classmates at UAL. The concept for our prototype was very well received. However, as it was a wearable that was non-functional, there was disappointment expressed in the feedback.
After seeing the demonstration the class came up with the following insights:
1. They said that the pictures of the final prototype looked beautiful
2. They really enjoyed the look of the prototype and said that it could be displayed in a gallery. However, they said that they could not understand exactly what we were trying to portray through the design
- Reflection -
As the final presentation for the "Ux of hair" happened online we could not ask any volunteers to test out our prototype. I believe we could have gained some interesting insights, had someone else tried it on. Nonetheless, we were really proud of how naturally beautiful our final design looked. When we knew we were creating the prototype of a ginormous human hair braid, we knew we were going to focus on the visual part of our design. So it was important that it looked pleasing to the eye. We were very much happy with the final results.
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