We started the week by trying to perform some more hands-on research. We collected ladybirds from a park in Hoxton, placing them in a plastic tumbler with some food (leaves) and some beard hair to watch how they interacted with the surface. We found that they would not move through the hair at all, due to their size, and so began thinking about the appropriate scale for smaller insects such as head lice.
The rest of the group also found some mesh fabric that felt similar to the surface of the human scalp. We pulled this taut underneath a table, covered it with a dust sheet and began crawling through to create an enclosed space, making us feel like bugs moving through a head of hair.
Draping some “hair” from the underside of the table, we crawled through as if to simulate this further, but we found an issue with scale – the string was too narrow to feel like an accurate analogy to real hair. We decided to add hair with more fidelity and to expand the experience as much as possible. I had previously had trouble with a “kitchen sink” approach, especially on the UX of Mould brief, but in this case we found it to be an excellent source of ideas that held together surprisingly well. This shows me that this can still be an effective (and fun) design approach if the initial ideas are solidly communicated and understood by the team throughout.
We covered the floor with cotton to provide a spongier, more skin-like surface; we dowsed the edges with Head & Shoulders shampoo; we tore up tortillas to simulate dandruff; we replaced the string with tights, suspended and widened; we suspended braids of hair from the top of the table to show the macrocosmic view of what we were creating; we played ASMR head scratching noises inside the tunnel; and we gave participants small LED lights to represent eggs that they could “lay” by the base of each stalk.
However, tube strikes resulted in our class being online, reducing the number of people able to experience our project. We should have changed approach earlier in order to utilise, rather than compromise for, this new situation. To show off our tunnel, Tanya and Weiting came into university and live streamed the journey through.
Our feedback said the following:
- It looked really cool, but you didn’t get the full experience online
- This would be a lot more effective over an even larger scale – a room or beyond
Looking back, while I’m very happy with how our experience turned out, it would have been much better if more of the class could have experienced it. We were so happy with our idea that we were overly reluctant to adapt and take full advantage of the new situation, which could have yielded even more interesting results.
Harry Solomons 