Brief: Design a way to express the skin/world interface.
Team: Ula Rodakowska, Yiwei Han, Ziyou Yin, Binru Liu
People always can say heart, lung, eyes and their functions when they are talking about the most important organ. Our skin is also essential and has many functions, but people ignore it sometimes. In this project, our group will show the experience of our skin through a prototype. Moreover, we want to apply this experience into the warning indicator in the future.
Discover
Our team researched the functions and features of the skin, which included animals’ skin. According to the result of research, we chose some important objects and made a brainstorming. After the brainstorming session, some opportunities were founded.
Our group chose these three areas because they had a close relationship with our life:
Texture, Thickness, Piloerection reflex, Artificial skin.
Texture:
We found some people need the company and be cared in modern society, but the stuffed toys could not meet their needs of accompanying in some time. Therefore, we planned to use different materials to simulate the texture and thickness of human skin. The banana peer was a good choice.
Thickness:
The skin in the different body parts has a different thickness. For example, the thickness of the skin of the shoulder is thicker than the arm (Sandby-Møller et al., 2003).
Hence, we thought that we might improve the tattoo gun to reduce the pain when people tattoo. The tattoo gun could control the length of its needle if people tattoo on some sensitive position.
Piloerection reflex:
Piloerection reflex is also called goosebumps. In an extremely stressful situation, the body can employ the “fight or flight” response and happen piloerection reflex. People also have piloerection reflex when they feel dangerous (Binder et al., 2009).
Therefore, we hope we can show the working principle of this physiological reaction and use it in some areas, such as warning and reminding.
Artificial skin:
Artificial skin is an excellent way to add functionality in our skin. We have two ideas about this topic. One is designing a special raincoat which has excellent heat preservation and water repellency. This raincoat also can change its colour when the temperature has changed. It can remind people away from dangerous high-temperature areas. The other idea is making an artificial skin which covers and protect our original skin under ultraviolet light (UV light). The working principle of the artificial skin is changing colour — turning black when UV light is strong or turning transparent or light colour if UV light is weak.
Define
In the define stage, we evaluated our four initial plan and chose one to become our final idea. These are simple models for our ideas.
In the tutorial, we showed our model and received some useful feedback. Some people thought that Piloerection Reflex is an excellent object to develop because it can be applied in the safety area very well. In addition, many people mentioned that the texture of Banana Hand was very nice and similar to real human skin.
After the interim presentation, our team decided to make a device which combined the Banana Hand and the Piloerection Reflex model. This prototype showed the reaction of our skin when we were in an emergency.
Development
After the function of our prototype was confirmed, our group began to design the prototype. This prototype had two parts: Banana Hand and the Piloerection Reflex model.
About the banana hand, we redeveloped it on the original basis. We planned to add a little piloerection reflex model inside and some surprising thing in the fingers of banana hand such as candy, water.
Furthermore, we decided to make a larger piloerection reflex model which as long as a human arm so that people could know the working principle.
The working process of our prototype is the “fine hair” in the piloerection reflex model stands immediately if the banana hand is hurt. Our group used cardboards and skewers to make the structure of piloerection reflex part of the prototype. The cardboards served as human’s skin, and the skewers served as the fine hair on the skin.
After that, the most critical problem was coming. How could we achieve the piloerection reflex? People have piloerection reflex with a trigger of some external stimulus and intense emotion which make the muscles attached to the base of each hair follicle contract and force the hair up (Binder et al., 2009).
The balloon was an appropriate control device which could simulate the muscle contraction and make the skewers to stand. We placed two small balloons in the middle of two cardboards at the first attempt, but the result was not satisfactory. The reason for it is that it was hard to control two balloons. For example, one balloon was still well when the other balloon was broken.
Therefore, we had to figure out this problem. The larger and longer balloon is better than a small balloon, and we tried using it. The result was perfect through testing.
We thought it was a good way to achieve the piloerection reflex in our prototype.
Deliver
We also added a small piloerection reflex device in the banana hand.
Our prototype was showed in the presentation.
Feedback & Reflection
On presentation day, we explained how our prototype was made and its working principle. We recruited five volunteers to interact with our final prototype and received the following feedback from our classmates and tutors.
Feedbacks:
The prototype showed how the piloerection reflex happened when people were in an emergency.
Volunteers were surprised at the candy, water in the “fingers” when they cut the banana fingers.
Improvement:
The small piloerection reflex device didn’t work in the banana hand because the banana peer is too thick. We should make the banana peer thinner.
Reflection
Our group thought our prototype was worth to keep developing because it could be used in real life. For instance, we could use it in the steering wheel of the car. We planned to use piloerection reflex to remind drivers who should be careful. The steering wheel had piloerection reflex if the driver doing some dangerous activities like Overspeed, or the car had some problem. There were some small pointy projections on the surface of the steering wheel, and the driver could feel them.
Reference
Binder, M., Hirokawa, N., and Windhorst, U. (2009) Encyclopedia of neuroscience. Berlin: Springer.
Sandby-Møller, J. et al. (2003). ‘Epidermal Thickness at Different Body Sites: Relationship to Age, Gender, Pigmentation, Blood Content, Skin Type and Smoking Habits’, Acta dermato-venereologica, 83(6), pp. 410–413. doi: 10.1080/00015550310015419.
