Abstract

In the world of software development, we often forget that, in the end, users are the ones who decide whether an application stays or goes. For this reason, most roles in the development of digital products aim to meet specific objectives. The role of a UX designer is to develop and enhance user experiences within products, services, or systems. However, this cannot be done without understanding users’ needs. This is where the UX researcher comes in, employing methodologies such as interviews, ethnographies, and usability tests. Yet, these approaches still fall short of capturing users’ real needs.

Introducing sensory ethnography, which involves constructing and understanding user needs collaboratively, could significantly improve digital products. However, this improvement would not be possible without the interface itself.

Keywords: body, interface, sensory ethnography, experience design

Introduction

We live in a world that prioritizes sight over other senses, reason over sensitivity, mind over body, and immediacy over permanence. Ours is an era of “fast” everything—fast fashion, fast food, and fleeting 10-second videos on platforms like TikTok or Instagram stories that vanish in 24 hours. As Bauman aptly described, we inhabit a modernity shaped by a culture of disposability.

In UX design, the focus is on enhancing user interactions with digital products. However, within product development, interface design often outweighs the importance of addressing users’ needs. According to Scolari, there should be an ecosystem connecting digital products, design, and user needs.

This essay proposes an approach that integrates the body as a crucial element for understanding users’ characteristics and needs. By applying sensory ethnography, we can develop a visual proposal for interface design that fosters more inclusive and effective user experiences.

Designing Possible Futures: Aesthetics and UX Digital product development has evolved over the years. While a small, technically skilled team sufficed in the past, today’s process requires diverse expertise at every stage—business strategy, engineering, marketing, and sales. UX research, in particular, has emerged as a pivotal role, ensuring digital products are user-friendly, functional, and interactive.

Despite advances in UX methodologies, the fact that users are living beings with evolving needs is often overlooked. Products are typically designed for an imagined ideal user rather than real ones. UX designers craft personas defined by age, gender, and socioeconomic status but neglect the most essential factor: the body.

As users age, their needs evolve. A clear example is biometric authentication in banking apps and smartphones. Over time, age-related skin changes can make fingerprint scanning increasingly difficult.

In the realm of aesthetics, Oliveras interprets Heidegger’s view of aesthetics as a “knowledge of human sensitivity related to sensations and feelings.” Sensitivity is dynamic, influenced by how we perceive and construct our world through interactions with others and external elements.

The body, long disregarded in design due to Cartesian dualism separating mind and body, reemerged as a critical subject in mid-20th-century social and political discourse. Scholars like Turner, Douglas, Foucault, and Haraway positioned the body as a mutable artifact, a site of meaning and power dynamics shaped through interaction.

Viewing the body as a medium of communication—much like an interface—opens possibilities for deeper user understanding. For Pierre Lévy, interfaces facilitate communication by transmitting and processing information, functioning as bridges between elements. McLuhan expands this idea, describing interfaces as extensions with attributes like obsolescence, recovery, and reversal.

In this context, the body can be seen as a non-artificial interface with biological processes shaping its obsolescence and adaptability. As Simondon noted, technology serves as an interface between culture and nature, with the body as a crucial participant in this dynamic.

Interfaces as Habitable and Political Spaces Interfaces, including digital ones, are spaces of interaction and agency. They are also political spaces, shaped by business priorities rather than user needs. As Rancière discussed in relation to aesthetic regimes, technological design often prioritizes commercial imperatives over inclusivity.

Interfaces create personal ecosystems for users, encasing them in flows of experience and navigation. However, this adaptability often comes at a cost: users are subtly conditioned to accept new interface designs and features, driven by corporate interests.

For meaningful UX research, it is crucial to consider the real and evolving needs of users. This includes marginalized groups, such as the elderly or people with disabilities, who are often excluded from mainstream design considerations despite their reliance on technology for daily interactions.

Conclusions

Both aesthetic processes in art and interface development are influenced by historical and political contexts. Unlike art, interfaces must strive for inclusivity, addressing users of all ages, cognitive abilities, and physical conditions.

While art requires intellectual and cognitive effort for appreciation, technological interfaces are designed to be easily adopted and adapted to users’ needs. By prioritizing sensory ethnography and incorporating the body as a core element of UX design, we can create digital products that foster inclusivity and better serve diverse users.

References

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