Designers are missing the weirdness factor in wearable tech
A new study reveals that wearable devices create unsettling, contradictory experiences—simultaneously comforting and frightening, human and mechanical—that current design methods can't explain or address. By borrowing concepts from monster theory, researchers show these jarring sensations matter: they could unlock richer product experiences and reveal what users actually want from body-worn technology.
Originaltitel: Inside the Mirror, Wearing My own Body: Why UX Should Engage Monstrous Experiences
While engaging with four different wearable systems, we unexpectedly encountered felt experiences that resisted articulation and defied conventional classification. They were neither pleasant nor unpleasant, and yet both; neither comforting nor frightening, and yet both; neither recognizably human-like nor machinic, and yet both. Such ambiguous experiences might have gone unnoticed had we not attended to their somatic, felt dimensions. Existing user experience frameworks offered little guidance in making sense of these phenomena. However, through the lens of monster theory, these paradoxical experiences began to reveal their structure and significance. Drawing on concepts such as fusion, fission, massification, and incompleteness, we analyze and interpret the unexpected monstrous experiences arising from interacting with wearable systems. We argue that such experiences deserve a place in interaction design: not only for the enduring fascination of the monster, but also for its power to disrupt simplistic schemas, enrich design possibilities, and illuminate cultural shifts.