UX of Rewinding
27 JUN 2025
- Framed everyday life as performance, re-seeing ordinary routines.
- Proposed a rewinding workshop to rehearse unspoken moments.
- Feedback: clarify why rewinding, define one emotion, and plan ethical recruitment/care.
It relates to the Final Major Project Proposal before the summer break.
Seeing Differently
We constantly perform expected roles across diverse social contexts in our daily lives. At home, at school, and in the workplace, we shift between multiple personas depending on the relationships we navigate. In this sense, we felt that we are not so different from actors who perform on a stage every day.
We also believed that the repeated movements of everyday life could reveal new meanings when viewed through the frame of ‘performance’. People climbing up and down stairs on their commute, those disappearing into the Tube from the platform, and the subtle gestures within a classroom can all be re-experienced as scenes of a performance. By capturing and reframing these familiar moments, this project hoped to make someone’s ordinary day feel a little more special.
Masks, Regret, and Recovery
As noted earlier, we seem to live as though wearing masks that match each contextual persona. At times, these masks hide our emotions, leaving them unexpressed, unresolved, or simply unattended. Such unresolved feelings may linger for a long time and become a burden.
This raised a question:
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What if we revisited those past moments in which we were unable to speak up, and tried rewriting them?
- What if performing what we could not do or say back then allowed us to find a sense of emotional ease?
To explore this, the project aimed to create an experience in which sensory stimuli, masks, and rewriting activities help users recall past memories and emotions and rehearse a new scenario. This project was envisioned as a therapeutic workshop for young adults in their 20s and 30s who experience emotional breakdowns, burnout, or societal pressure.
Connecting the Ideas
This concept builds on my previous Micro UX project exploring individual sensory experiences. The work can draw on Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, the Meisner repetition technique, and research on the relationship between olfaction and memory.
Feedback & Reflection
Feedback highlighted the need to clarify my personal or research-driven motivation for exploring ‘rewinding’. This topic can be meaningfully connected to themes such as scent and the performative nature of everyday life.
Regarding the research question, it was suggested that defining a specific ‘moment’ or ‘emotion’ would strengthen the focus. These could include regret, sadness, or embarrassment from the past. It is also necessary to articulate how meaningful or influential such moments are for the user.
In terms of research planning, the target group was considered appropriate, but I was advised to think more concretely about how to recruit participants. Since the project deals with sensitive emotional memories, safeguards such as participant protection, the right to withdraw, and aftercare must be carefully considered.
There was positive feedback on extending previous project experiences and linking them coherently. It was also suggested that examining how the future might change once the past becomes ‘rewritable’ could be an interesting direction.
Ultimately, this project requires a clear answer to the questions: Why revisit the past? Why is it necessary to look back instead of only moving forward? Addressing these foundational questions will help solidify the project’s direction.
Reference
- Dewey, J. (1934) Art as Experience. New York: Minton, Balch & Company.
- Goffman, E. (1956) The presentation of self in everyday life. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, Social Sciences Research Centre.
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