Hybrid Body Craft: Toward Culturally and Socially Inclusive Design for On-Skin Interfaces

Sensor device miniaturization and breakthroughs in novel materials have enabled technology to progress directly onto the skin surface. However, unlike all other media, the human body is a complex and meaning-laden surface that encompasses a wearer’s individual, social, and political identities. Yet, research in on-skin interfaces has focused on engineering aspects, with a scant focus on the cultural and social dimensions of device design. Hybrid Body Craft presents a design approach for bridging the cultural aspects of body crafts, which are existing cultural, historical, and fashion-driven practices and rituals associated with body decoration, with emerging on-skin interfaces. Here, we present a series of more socially and culturally inclusive on-skin interface designs that incorporate various emerging materials and technologies into body craft customs. A design space examines the impact of technology on increasing the agency of self-expression and communication, along with design implications for increased democratization and inclusiveness in design for body surface interfaces to enable the presentation of unique identities.