Feather Hair: Interacting with Sensorized Hair in Public Settings

Abstract

Human hair opens up new opportunities for embodied interactions that build on its unique physical affordances and location on the body. As hair has high socio-cultural significance, the design of hair interfaces is coupled with social and personal needs. Albeit this makes field investigations indispensable, they are missing from prior work. We present a fabrication approach for gesture-controlled hair interfaces that are robust enough to be deployed in the field. Our approach contributes sensorized feather hair extensions that combine capacitive and piezoresistive sensing. Their tactile properties make the interface blend seamlessly with human hair. We furthermore contribute results from a field experiment where participants gained first-hand experience in various social contexts. These show how hair-based interactions have great potential moving beyond planar touch gestures whilst their social appropriateness is context-sensitive. We synthesize the findings into design implications that ground the future design of usable and socially acceptable hair interfaces.