Team: Sebastian Ervi/ Gabrielle Bennet/ Rikkie Xiong/ Zhaolu Song
Brief: Design a way to expresses the skin/world interface.
Time: 06.11.2020 -12.11.2020
Narrow Concepts
Based on last week's feedback, we decided to narrow our concepts to “Embracing imperfections” which was the most important idea we wanted to share.
We discussed several different methods to externalize our concept, for example displaying human natural skin like wrinkles, freckles by different materials, telling meaningful scar stories, using balloons and package bags to simulate the cesarean section process.
My ideas. Image by me.
Tutorial
We had a good conversation with John. He liked the scar stories idea and showed us a photo by John Coplans, whose photographs depict body parts become like a landscape of skin texture and body contours. He also suggested us to involve all classmates and teachers to share their scar stories. However, we need to think about how to bring stories out.
Self-Portrait (Hands Spread on Knees) 1985 photographed by John Coplans
"Each one of us has scars no matter big or small and each scar has its story, which is powerful." - John.
How to bring ‘scar stories’ out?
We came up with several ideas on how to display scar stories.
1. Showing scar photos with QR code which contains audio of the scar story
2. Taking polaroid photos of people’ scars and listening to their stories
3. Choosing different textures which represent people’s emotion about their scars
We decided to take polaroid photos of people’s scars and also provide pens and paper to draw scars for those who don’t want to show their scars.
I suggested sticking emoji stickers on scar polaroid photos to encourage people who think scars are imperfections. Considering it might cost a lot of time, we didn’t use it in the end.
Stickers ides. Sketch by me.
"MA UX Scar Stories"
We made a scar story wall and shared our stories firstly and then invited others to share. Beyond my expectation, lots of people would like to share.
People sharing their scar stories. Photos by me.
MA UX - Scar Stories. Photo by me.
Our Scar Stories. Photo by me.
In the end, I felt it’s not just our team’s presentation but our whole class story sharing party. Everyone participated, shared their stories, and enjoyed the whole process.
What I’ve Learned
Design is finding clarity in chaos. We had too many different ideas at first and it was very hard to decide which idea to develop further. It’s always essential to come back to our concept of what we want to express and how we want to affect others’ thinking.
Besides, always being open, trying new things, and thinking things from different perspectives helps getting rid of being trapped in one set thinking mode.
Reference
Coplans, J. (1985) Self-Portrait (Hands Spread on Knees) Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/john-coplans-2353 (Accessed: 10 November 2020).
Kellett, H. (2017) Skin Portraiture: Embodied Representations in Contemporary Art. Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. The University of Western Ontario. Available at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/4567 (Accessed: 31 October 2020).
Sturm, J. (2014) Bodies We Fail: Productive Embodiments of Imperfection. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.
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