Project / Second Skin

1.1

THE CONCEPT
Second Skin is a system to make your own on-skin "tattoo" interfaces. They can also be attached to other surfaces to quickly make a new interface.

These tattoos can be connected and used to control electronic devices via bluetooth. Attatched are a desktop and mobile application, which let you design and share your designs with a community.

1.1.1 First, we needed to educate ourselves on the possibilities of interacting with your own skin.

2.1

RESEARCH
We looked at our potential users, defined personas with userstorys and tried coming up with various ways to act with an interface directly on your skin.

Next we defined actual use cases, like using your smartphone without actually taking it out of your pocket, controlling your smart-home or even implanting RFID chips into your tattoo.

2.2

HOW IT WORKS
Tattoos can be designed in the desktop application. Users can choose from premade templates and customize their shape in our simple editor. The advanced editor can be used to draw your own shapes using vectors.

Users than choose a function for their tattoo, for example assigning the function *pause music* to a circular button.

Upload you design with its functions and descriptions to our library - or keep it private.

Now you need to order your tattoo (or print it out yourself and assemble it), stick it on your skin or any other surface and connect it to a device using the mobile phone application.

2.1.1 Use cases for Second Skin - most require a smartphone.

2.1.2 We came up with unique gestures to use with an on-skin interface.

2.2.1 Quick summary of how the system works.

2.3 Use case: controlling your phones music player with two tats - one slider and one simple button.

3.1

PROTOTYPE
After looking at the technology needed for our tattoo-interfaces, we built a working protoype with a Bare Conductive Touch board, some copper strips and a little
bit of code. The tattoo prototype was attached to a fake arm with an LED-bracelet. The circular tattoo changes the color of the LED-bracelet on press, the 7 strips each
turn on one of the LEDs on the bracelet.

3.1.1 Building the prototype. Swipe over the slider-strips to activate LEDs one by one.

4.1

APPLICATIONS
While building the prototype we also worked on a system containing
a desktop and mobile phone application. The desktop app would let you design your own tattoos with functions assigned to them.
The mobile app is used to connect the tattoos to your phone or other bluetooth-devices. Users have their own profile with their saved tattoos, but these can also be shared with the community.

4.1.1 Home screen, access to editors, user library and the community.

4.1.2 The users personal library with all their projects.

4.1.3 Share creations with the community library.

4.1.4 Simple editor, choose from templates and link them to functions you want.

4.1.5 The advanced editor - create any shape you want.

4.1.6 Project page with description, used parts and some pics.

4.1.7 Log in, choose from your library, then connect and calibrate your finished tattos with the Second Skin app.

General Project Information

TEAM
Katja Rößler
Nico Gaupp
Jonas Pflug
‍
PROJECT DURATION
16 weeks

SUPERVISION
Professor David Oswald

MY ROLES
‍Ideation, Concept, Interaction Design,
Visual Design, Prototyping

COURSE
Invention Design, 3rd Semester,