Overview
Over winter break 2021 I joined MIT Media Lab as a student researcher on Saving Face — a suite of easily scaled technologies to help people fight the pandemic by warning them when they’re about to touch their faces. Small team: three researchers and one engineer; I carried the research and visual design side from January to May.
The approach
The mobile app takes a SONAR-inspired approach: your earbuds transmit an ultrasound signal, and the microphone — positioned near your face — receives it. From that echo the app measures the distance between hand and face, and sounds an alarm when they get too close. No camera, no wearable, nothing to buy: just the earbuds already in your pocket.
The video walkthrough — how the system works and how to set it up.
What I did
My job was making the technology legible to people who’d never think about ultrasound:
- Designed and refined the mobile app’s UI.
- Created the user manual and the visual materials around the system.
- Worked with the product researchers on the justification documentation — the why this works alongside the how to use it.
- Integrated the written instructions, graphics, and video content for the project’s online publication, including the video walkthrough.
What it taught me
Saving Face was my first time designing for a system whose core interaction is invisible — you can’t see ultrasound, so the interface and the guidance materials are the product’s legibility. Explaining an unseen mechanism clearly enough that people trust an alarm from it turned out to be a design problem in itself, and it’s the same problem I’ve been working on ever since: making invisible systems read clearly.
