Finding ways to express yourself in a socially acceptable way may be hard when you’re filled with emotions. Social Skin is series of moving accessories that help to improve the communication between people by expressing these emotions. The project resulted in three prototypes, out of which two are conceptual prototypes and the third, a necklace, is fully functional.
Social Skin is a project by Seçil Ugur and Laura Duncker, made at the Wearable Senses research theme at the Industrial Design department at the Technical University of Eindhoven, in collaboration with Florian Neveu (technology) and supervised by Stephan Wensveen. They are the first prototypes in Seçil’s continuing research for her PhD in Design at the Politecnico di Milano, supervised by Raffaella Mangiarotti (Design Faculty), Monica Bordegoni, Umberto Cugini and Marina Carulli (Mechanical Engineering Department).
Skin+Bone Skin+Bone is a necklace that chokes you when your stress levels go up. When the necklace curls around your neck action is required. By pulling the necklace away from you can release the tension in your body and breath deeply in order to calm both yourself and the necklace. The necklace works with a heart rate sensor that is worn on the chest and galvanic skin response sensor that sense your general activeness (active vs. passive) and your level of stress (steady vs. arrhythmic heartbeat).
Fight-Flight Fight-Flight is a wearable for guys based on the shape of a holster that would sense stress through a bent posture or body tension. When stress is detected the holster would respond by contracting, a response not unlike the raising of one’s shoulders in times of stress. In order to release the holster the wearer must assume a more relaxed and healthy posture.
Under my Skin Under my Skin is an accessory that senses joy. It works with moving tassels or chains that have magnets attached that move with a servomotor worn underneath the clothes. Under my Skin would work with both a galvanic skin response sensor and a heart rate sensor. Seçil and Laura will continue working together to create other products exploring the possibilities of wearable technology to create new ways of communicating emotions. The next series will focus on communication over distance.
