Tactile Grounds

Tactile Grounds is an object designed for the “active seeing” of the ground, your movement, and their interplay.

With this project, I wished to explore just:

Tactile Grounds consists of a sole cavity for “seeing” the materiality of the ground and an elevated sole pad for “seeing” the topology of the ground. The cavity and elevated pad are not only meant to allow you to explore the materiality and topology of the ground, but also the speed, stability, and confidence of your movement, and the interplay between the ground and your movement. It allows you to notice, appreciate, connect, and question. Hopefully, leading to an increased awareness of both the ground and your movements.

This increased awareness ideally leads to questions and findings similar to:

In some sense, the project was flawed from the onset in that it was extremely difficult to make a decent shoe from foam core. This prevented me from running more effective user testing. It was not uncommon for a user to be worried about breaking the object, which was partly my fault because I asked them to not break it. This made it difficult to entirely explore the possible environments the object could operate in and develop a cavity and elevated pad that best optimized the experience on a variety of terrain.

It was also difficult to create a video that conveyed the experience a user would have with my object in a way that is engaging while also providing the necessary information. Unlike other objects, its effect was not visual or auditory, instead it was about touch and how that touch effected the rest of your body.

In my initial video draft, I dictated to users what they should feel. I felt that this was ineffective and decided to rely on a user’s past to provide context. This way a user could imagine what experience they could have with Tactile Grounds even though they were not directly involved in its development.

It is also important to point out that every user’s perception of the video will be entirely based on their past experiences. I ultimately tried to portray the possibilities and aspects of the object a user could experience, specifically the ability it gives you to notice, appreciate, connect, and question.

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