UX of Hair

Building upon our research from week one, we had further interactions with different people inclusive of an online survey about situations when they normally get frustrated because of their hair::

Further more, we conducted more research to get more insight about situations when hair causes uneasiness or discomfort while carrying out daily activities. On average, these were the responses:

Do you feel uneasy because of your hair? If yes, then when?

• Awkward bangs
• When taking a shower and my hair falls off
• I have to have good hair before I go out. If I have a bad hair day, it makes my day a bad one
• Very hard to set a good hairstyle because of the humidity
• I'm afraid it doesn't look good or it looks oily
• Cover my face when I look down

Does your hair make you feel uncomfortable?

• Afraid it becomes ugly.
• I feel as if it’s falling out. It makes me scared for the future, whether I will lose all my hair.
• Dandruff, hair loss.
• Bad hair day (sticky) / cooking smell.
• Too long, hard to dry.
• Whenever I have bad hair days, unruly or dry hair.

To simulate these annoyances, we experimented putting hair like material in-front of our eyes to understand how does one feel when hair gets into your eye. We also tried out twigs and leaves in our hair to further understand our sensations and experiences with long hair.

From the in-person interviews and an online survey we rolled out using Google Forms, we were able to establish that many did not generally feel uncomfortable because of their hair. More to this:

• Though unintentional, long hair can be an annoyance and can make even the easiest of tasks really hard to accomplish especially when styled or blown to the front.
• Moments when strands of hair get into someone’s mouth seem to be the most annoying.
• Maintaining hair can be a daunting task especially when someone has not discovered products that suit their needs.
• Generally, people don’t feel sad about their hair.
• Hair is personal and requires a certain level of trust even for a task as small as touching it.

To substantiate our data, here is what Tom had to say:

Narrowing down the information collected from bodystorming, directed storytelling and an online survey by individuals from diverse sources we made further modifications to the prototype. We made it:

• Longer
• Heavier
• Wilder

And added more material variety.

We presented the final designs online and we took rather a different approach. We had other people try the final design while doing day-to-day activites and their experiences can be watched below:

After our first online presentation, here was the feeback:

• Have a wilder look.
• Make it heavier.
• Explore more areas.

This project had a lot of conflicting ideas and once again reminded us about the importance of fully embracing the team mind and therefore accomplishing goal tasks to completion.