UX of Senses - Week 1

👥 : Prashanthi Balachander (Bala), Dany Garcia, Rylee Li, Jacob Tomes

🗓 : October 7 - 14, 2021

📍: London, UK

I finally started my first week of my masters, and it was a terrifying yet exciting experience. To start, we were tasked with designing an instrument for intangible, immeasurable and invisible things around London streets. Our team decided to explore Brick Lane to get ideas for our project. While exploring, we looked closely at our surroundings and objects we often do not look at.

At first glance, I noticed graffiti, stores and cars and people roaming the area. Looking closer, there was a lot of pollution: trash, smoke, and dust covering the surfaces. My group and I noticed the feel of different ground textures as we walked around. We also observed the air: the smell of food, cigarette smoke and how cold it felt when we inhaled. The team and I chatted with Dany, who was quarantined at the time. We showed him the area, but unfortunately, he did not get a full experience through the phone camera.

After a long day of exploring, we returned to campus to brainstorm ideas on our final prototype. Some initial ideas included looking at dirt and pollution and recreating overcast conditions in London. Though these ideas did not work, the team and John thought it would be interesting to investigate Dany's perception of London when he was in quarantine. We then asked him some questions regarding his experiences in his quarantine hotel.

We decided to build a prototype portraying Dany's experience of isolation and containment while in quarantine. We created a periscope to demonstrate Dany’s point of view, a bottom-up angle. When we were chatting with Dany, we often held our phones in a slant angle below our faces. We used mirror paper to create the inside of the periscope, which symbolised the distorted and blurry view inside the periscope. We wanted to create a disorienting and confusing feeling while he was chatting with us due to poor video-call connection. We also incorporated a video that represented things he heard and saw when talking with us. It consisted of the sound of WhatsApp and the different videos we took while exploring Brick Lane.

During our chat with Dany, he mentioned feeling isolated while also having the sense of being with someone during quarantine. He described how other people were quarantined at the same time, giving Dany a sense of camaraderie with other guests going through the same experience. To imitate this feeling, we took a long carton box, cut two big holes, and created a barrier between them to give a sense of togetherness yet isolation while in quarantine.

Feedback was positive. People commented on how effective the prototype was and how it was innovative, considering it was an important but underrepresented perspective. This was a great introduction to the MA UX program. I enjoyed the physical aspect of the projects and how we did not rely on the “typical” UX methodologies.