Experiment Planning

I decided to continue to work with shaving instead of switching to an earlier ethnography that I did. I feel that shaving offers a lot of opportunity to alter the looks, feel, taste, small or sound to create one of the moods listed.

After going to the lecture and finding out all the moods we could elicit I decided that I would look primarily at glamour, austerity, comfort and routine. I did not like rebellion for shaving as the history of women shaving comes from rebelling against society with movements such as feminism and suffrage.

I drafted some ideas for experiments concerning the above moods and decided on:

Glamour
Setting up a shaving station, some one will shave for you. The idea being that someone else shaving for you is very luxurious, its an incredible removal from the everyday. It is also strongly relatable to the idea of perfection that comes with feeling glamourous. The materials used for the station would be glossy, floaty and feel soft and luxurious with an emphasis on relaxation.

Austerity
Creating a razor, soap and perhaps a male traditional soap application brush out of home wares in a cheap and austere manor. There would be simple designs, no luxury moisturizing foam strip, wooden, block shapes. The idea would be to create a very minimal, brown looking, old fashioned, simple tools used for shaving. Even the way water was incorporated into shaving would be looked into.

Comfort
Foam seat in the shower for shaving legs. The seat would be covered in soft, fluffy, squishy foam which would make the user more comfortable when shaving their legs, they would no longer have to stand awkwardly but rather would be able to sit in comfort and enjoy the warmth of the water and the experience of shaving. In terms of proving that this would be comfortable for people, it would be for women, it would be for women who have grown up since shaving their legs was customary and do it quickly and efficiantly. These women tend to be city dwellers, spending a lot of time on their feet conducting their affairs so sitting down on a soft chair to shave would come as a welcome relief.

Routine
Creating a box which holds the shaving tools which forces the user to conduct a very routine like form when shaving. Shaving itself is very routine and is a very common place activity, but the routine would be in the starting of shaving. The beginning varies according to my ethnography meaning creating a place where the tools were only accessed after the user had used the previous tool would force a routine.