2020-12-14 / Sunny

 

Brief: Final Major Project 

Partner: Chuyi

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Design modification

Chuyi is in Wuhan this week. We reorganized and unified our thinking. With regard to the form of the final work we wanted to create a sensory experience that explored and emphasized the group of pregnant women and further reflected the conflicts and issues between gender, family and society.

From the perspective of gender differences, we found that pregnant groups need to pay attention to something meaningful. Pregnancy is a process that changes women both physically and mentally. Therefore, we have constructed an emotional perception art installation centered on physical experience. The prototype of this installation is a uterus. Experiencers can enter into this artificial uterus to experience the changes of pregnant women's emotions from the perspective of infants.

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Device modeling design

First of all, we have a preliminary understanding of what a human womb looks like through pictures on the Internet. We use the iPad to draw what our mental devices look like.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Material selection

According to our sketch, we will first make a ball that can hold an adult. And to simulate a baby's perspective, we made the ball look blurry from the inside out. According to our requirements, we customized a 1.8m diameter plastic ball made of PVC material from the factory. He then customised 2,000 clear plastic balls into the big ball to create the sensation of amniotic fluid. In terms of the color of the uterus, we started to think about the form of painting, but we felt it was too straightforward, so we came across some fabric shops and found different textures. After testing, we finally chose to wrap the large transparent sphere with red gauze cloth, and then use red wire and tube to make the feeling of blood vessels. This is the initial shape of the uterus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the external design of the device is completed, the design focus of the second stage is how to let the experiencer feel the change of emotion.

 

Storyboard

First of all, we drew the general flow through the storyboard.

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1V1 Interview

Chuyi and I interviewed six pregnant women to better understand their emotional state during pregnancy. We interviewed two people at the same time (one didn't have a picture because he didn't agree to turn on the camera) and then we interviewed two people separately.(Due to the epidemic, all interviews were conducted online)

The interview questions were divided into the first trimester, the second trimester and the third trimester.

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First trimester of pregnancy

How did you feel instantly when you learned you were pregnant?

When you share this news with loved ones and family members, do they feel the same way you do?

Do you share news of your pregnancy with friends outside your family?

Do you have anything to worry about and look forward to for the next 10 months of pregnancy?

 

Second trimester of pregnancy

Compared to the early stages of pregnancy, what changes have you experienced physically and mentally?

Do you think these physical and psychological changes have an impact on family relationships?

Are there moments in the second trimester when you regret getting pregnant? What are the reasons for this psychology?

Have you experienced any emotional ups and downs during your second trimester? Can you recall and share?

 

Third trimester of pregnancy

What do you say to a newborn baby when you meet it for the first time?

Apart from financial conditions and realistic pressure factors, would you choose to continue to have a second child in the future? Why is that?

Looking back at your 10-month pregnancy, what advice and blessings do you have for a family trying to conceive?

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We found three common situations: women who discover they are pregnant don't react as excitedly as they expected; Most women admitted that their male partner could not be with them during pregnancy because of work; Women often pay more attention to their unborn children, and even make some personal compromises and concessions for the healthy development of the fetus.

In addition to the interviews, we also made a sound recording of one week period daily life segments of one pregnant women, which included 
abundant and diverse auditory elements coming from the interactions and conversations around her. 

 

 

 

 

To enhance the experience, we wanted to add visual

and auditory design. So we extracted three representative

clips from the recording of the pregnant woman's life,

in which the pregnant woman's mood fluctuated greatly,

mainly in some daily conversations with her partner. We

then combined the audio content with Plutchik's Wheel

theory (Donaldson, M., 2017) to create a bar chart of the

mood changes of pregnant women during pregnancy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Based on the emotion-color model, we matched five common life emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust) with five colors (yellow, blue, green, red, and purple) and drew colorful bars on the corresponding horizontal axis. The bar chart for positive emotions is above the horizontal axis, while the bar chart for negative emotions is below. The variation of the length of the bar reflects the fluctuation of the mood. The longer the bar chart, the more volatile the mood swings; The shorter the bar chart, the smoother the mood swings.

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For the display of color vision, we chose to use different colors of light to match the emotion in the audio.

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Lighting test

 

 

 

 

 

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