UX of Hair

After we had a fun but intense final presentation of UX of mould, followed by lunch, we had our next adventure handed to us in a new round of groups; UX of Hair. We all had a sit-down in our respective groups and shared a plethora of ideas. Ours ranged from visibility, society’s expectation and hair as a language, sharing all these via FigJam.

Waxing experience

Halfway through our discussion on hairiness and why some people are hesitant towards some hair removal methods, we explored “body-tapping” to simulate hair removal by waxing.

"Are trees similar to humans?"

We further set out for a park next to Sainsbury, Elephant and Castle to try and find a connection between hair on top of our heads and trees. This included a brief experiment on the similarities between plucking a leaf off a plant as with hair off our bodies.

As a part of our research we interacted with different kinds of people having different kinds of hair and hair routine. Some were students, professors, bus passengers or friends across the globe. We asked them the questions like:

• When was the last time they felt sad about their hair?
• When do you feel frustrated because of their hair?
• What do you do or want to do if you get frustrated because of your hair?
• Do you think it’s difficult for you to maintain your hair?

© Reagan Bbengo 2022

© Roshni Suri 2022

© Qibin Cheng 2022

Interview audios:

Findings

As we spoke to different people, we got familiar with different scenarios and struggles which people usually have, but one common point that stood out was most of them didn’t feel sad about their hair, they felt uneasy. Hair become a problem when they started hampering day to day activities making the easiest of the task difficult to do.

Here is a timelapse video of the protototyping process

Roshni helped us test the prototype by doing a few press-ups

After an nervous presentation, here was the feeback:

• Exaggerate it
• Activities are too simple
• Should be longer
• Hair was not really in the way
• Add weight
• Consider wind
• Hair at the front

Here were the key take-away points:

• Add more detail to the presentation.
• Have an orderly presentation.
• Don't cut into each other's time or speech.
• Give each other dedicated time prior.
• Be aware of sensitive topics and stereotypes.