What’s the problem with Masks?
Can you imagine when bringing your carefully handcrafted wallet to your best friend at a surprise party as you yelling “happy birthday!” but not receiving any expected feedback like wide eyes and open mouth? Wouldn’t that not having to see a big smile on a face make you disappointed?
Facial expression is something that we haven’t aware of its important role in everyday social interactions between people but would feel a big difference once we lost it.
From my own experience, I realize that as we all put on masks to protect ourselves from the spreading of the pandemic, it’s been harder to tell one’s emotions from facial expression. It also makes emotion sharing or empathy more difficult to use as we can hardly convey our emotional feedback via facial expression.
“What is” and “How” about the Emotional Mask?
The Emotional Mask is designed for anyone who wants to express their emotions with masks on as the mask would show a big smile indicating that the user is feeling happy. It is also an emotion monitor that could collect facial data from sensors by detecting muscle movement and send the quantitative data to a connected phone app for psychological emotion reports such as “You smile 10 times today:)”. There are three modes for the masks that allow users to adjust the mask with three different privacy levels of how much they want the mask to capture and show their facial expressions.
The purpose of the device is to help users express hidden facial expression in a relatively safer way and also encourage them to pay attention to how they are feeling every day and get supported through the app. The prototype aims to explore the feasibility of embedding such function to masks and desirability of the adjusting privacy modes.
Designing and Prototyping…
- From preliminary brainstorming and sketches, my ideas were simply about showing a happy smile when feeling good and a sad one when feeling bad.
2. Finding a fabric mask that is thick enough to sew was a little bit hard.
3. After sketching out the circuit and layout of the four LEDs, I started to move on to temporarily position the LEDs on the mask.
4. As I wanted to adjust the brightness of the mask so that the LEDs serve as an indicator of different modes for users to choose, I start thinking about how to incorporate 2 batteries at the same time.
5. Then I converted what’s on the circuit diagram to a mask version and figured how would the conductive thread be sewed for a complete circuit. Batteries were designed close to the two ends of the mask so that after sewing back the piece of fabric as a circuit cover, it would be still easy to change the battery with two side openings.
6. There are three fasteners: “Bright”, “Dim”, and “OFF” as the switch can be manually connected to “Two batteries”, “One battery”, and “No battery”. Different brightness indicates different modes and the off one helps avoid any accidental touch of the switch.
7. My design also changed as I realized that there may be unnecessary for an extra strip to go around the neck as a fastener and switch for the lights. Simply using the conductive thread would achieve the desire function.
8. A button was added on top of the fastener for ease of press.
9. Lastly, sewing back the cover fabric!
Summary of testing
What worked well?
- Creative use of the mask as a fabric
- The use of three different fasteners work well; the option to dim/turn was pretty neat and surprising (from critique)
- Drawing the whole connection first helps envision how to sew, where to place LEDs
- The sewing went better than I thought! The conductive thread made the circuit and LED testing much easier for I could make sure the finished circuit is working well segment by segment
Effectiveness of Design & Improvements
- With a simple usability test with my friend, the observations and feedback indicate that it is hard to adjust the modes with the fasteners. Users sometimes need to take off the masks to adjust and the fastener should be bigger so that it’s easier to press with maybe just one figure.
- Fasteners near the jaw may be uncomfortable to wear when thinking about potential movements that people make do while wearing a mask, such as looking down, turning heads, and etc.
- More consideration needs to be given to the long-term use of the device as a question raise: How might the Emotional Mask be used after COVID when masks may be less common?
What to change for prototype and process in another iteration
- I was having a hard time incorporating the LEDs at the beginning of the project as I narrowed my self to perceive LED as only lights. From critiques and studio, I realized that LED could be an indicator of data or something is working. I would try to be less literal while brainstorming the use of materials, components, and tools.
- Eliminate the weight of the mask. With two button batteries and their connecting “boxes” together with 4 LEDs, the mask is quite heavy for a face wearing and bothersome. Maybe change the choice of the materials or make the mask as an attachment instead?
- Will make use of the conductive thread more in a future iteration. My original mask design changed as I realized that there may be unnecessary for a strip to go around the neck as a fastener and switch for the lights. Simply using conductive thread would achieve the same purpose and allow a more comfortable wearing experience.
- Something about the practical use of such a device: All the embedded functions increase the cost and making the process of a mask. Would this be necessary for improving the functionality of a mask? Or being against the fundamental needs of wearing a mask as such an advanced mask makes a basic virus-protecting mask not available to people who can’t afford it?
For future usability testing… maybe remote testing is a possibility!
