Brief
Conceive make and wear a design that extends human senses beyond the body
Team-mates
Jumleena Bhagawati, Chia-Lin Ma (Jolin), Mohammed Bekkaoui (Beck), Weiting Chi, Changlin Hou (Charlie)
Date
03/10/22 - 6/10/22
Welcome to the first blog in term 1 of MA UX. The topic for this week's brief is UX of Human senses. For this project, we had to conceive make and wear a design that extends human senses beyond the body. We had to do an exercise where each group was allocated a sense and a place. We were encouraged to exaggerate and document our experiences in this sense as we explore our location.
In this blog post, I have presented my documentation of our experience, observation, research, and the prototype-building process that we did as a team of 5 on this project. 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 clues at Fromagerie WC1N3LL -
As a group, we had to do an exercise where we were allocated a sense and a place. Our group got Fromagerie (WC1N 3LL) as the location where we could seek out inspiration to develop an experience for our topic. We were encouraged to exaggerate and document our experiences in this sense as we explore our location.
Fromagerie was a cafe and store where artisan cheesemongers served Modern European cuisine in a relaxed space. As we neared it we were hit by the delicious smell wafting from the cafe and our visual senses were tantalized by the colorful array of fresh produce, cheese, and wines. However, we were really confused as to whether our location had anything to do with our brief. We came across a map framed in a wooden case across the street but nothing apart from that.
We then decide to quickly drop by a craft store and pick up a few magnets for a few experiments we decided to carry out.
Exercises
We used the magnets to search for magnetic materials in and around Fromagerie
Then we did a short exercise. I generally have a bad sense of direction and our team-mate Charlie has a good sense of direction, hence we were the perfect case study. We both to closed our eyes and after spinning three times we simultaneously has to point out which direction true north was.
Later Jolin comes in with the compass to correctly point us to the true north. From the images above we can see that neither I nor Charlie could sense out, even after praying to the gods of intuition, the direction we were supposed to point to.
- Research -
Magnetoreception is a sense which allows an organism to detect the Earth's magnetic field. Animals with this sense include some arthropods, mollusks, and vertebrates.
The sense is mainly used for orientation and navigation, but it may help some animals to form regional maps. Experiments on migratory birds provide evidence that they make use of a cryptochrome protein in the eye, relying on the quantum radical pair mechanism to perceive magnetic fields. This effect is extremely sensitive to weak magnetic fields and readily disturbed by radio-frequency interference, unlike a conventional iron compass.
Research on magnetoreception in humans is very limited. It is widely accepted that the Earth’s static magnetic field is not sensed by humans, while alternating magnetic fields, such as power frequency fields[Nordmann, GC et al., 2017] and pulsed fields [Maslanyj, M. et al, 2010], can have adverse health effects and therapeutic applications, respectively. However another study showed that men could sense the ambient GMF (geomagnetic field) north during the test period and used this information to identify the magnetic north direction of both the ambient GMF and the relatively inhomogeneous modulated magnetic fields generated by the Helmholtz.
The study showed that blue-light-dependent human magnetoreception occurs in the eyes in a manner that appears to involve the brain and glucose, whereas the magnetoreceptor and magnetoreception mechanism remains to be established[Chae KS et al., 2019].
- Design Process -
Brainstorming & Sketching
Our team first diverged to brainstorm out a few concepts for our design idea. We tried to develop a fun experience utilizing the research that we gathered. We wanted to include in the prototype some form of magnetic interaction.
Working on the Design
For our concept, we used mostly materials such as aluminum foil, a compass, magnets, and water.
Challenge
The process of building the prototype was particularly easy what was difficult was arriving at a design concept in order to interpret our ideas to the user.
Goal
The goal of the interaction design was to try and find food floating on water using only the body as an indicator when the direction in which the food was given (Eg, NE,SW etc).
- Prototype -
We tried to develop a small-scale wearable that gets magnetized and floats on water. The user is blindfolded and made to float on water after magnetizing the wearable. After a few rotations in the water, the magnetized rod in the design should automatically point to the north. Food will be hidden in one of the directions close to the edge of the swimming pool.
After assigning a direction such as "SW" to the blindfolded user, they must use their body and the magnetized rod attached to the wearable to successfully find the food across the body of water.
- 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 hard to experience , there was disappointment expressed in the feedback.
After seeing the demonstration the class came up with the following insights to aid us with our concept and design further down the road:
1. It was not feasible to experience within the four walls of the classroom.
2. It needs to be researched further.
3. It was argued that the floaty is not an actual wearable. Need to come up with a new design concept.
- Reflection -
After analyzing the feedback we realized that we need to further our research on this topic. It was hard to navigate through the brief with magnetoreception being the human sense given to us as research on magnetoreception in humans is very limited. We could not find enough information on how animals experience it as well, with the sense being just described as a natural instinct. We realized that we could have moved on to a different sense but as a group, we were too headstrong to just give up without a try. Maybe next time we will be smarter.
The first week was very stressful in terms of the design but my team was extremely collaborative and hands-on which was great! If an ideal team exists, working on my team was nothing short of perfection. .
- Reflection -
Nordmann GC, Hochstoeger T, Keays DA. Magnetoreception-A sense without a receptor. PLoS Biol. 2017 Oct 23;15(10):e2003234. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.2003234. PMID: 29059181; PMCID: PMC5695626.
Vadalà, M. et al. Mechanisms and therapeutic effectiveness of pulsed electromagnetic field therapy in oncology. Cancer Med.5, 3128–3139 (2016).
Chae KS, Oh IT, Lee SH, Kim SC (2019) Correction: Blue light-dependent human magnetoreception in geomagnetic food orientation. PLOS ONE 14(10): e0223635. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0223635
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