12. Skin Electronics¶
Research¶
Photo from of Maker Camp
In this exploration, I am researching the emerging field of skin electronics — wearable systems that integrate sensors, conductive materials, or interfaces directly onto or near the surface of the skin. Unlike traditional wearables that are attached to garments or accessories, skin electronics function closer to the body, enabling new approaches to monitoring movement, touch, temperature, bio-signals, and interactive communication through flexible and lightweight materials.
What interests me about this area is how it merges textiles, body interaction, and soft technology, and how designers and researchers are rethinking electronics as materials that can move, stretch, breathe, and adapt with the human body. Skin electronics shift the relationship between technology and wearers — from rigid devices to intimate, responsive, and embodied systems. This raises both creative potential and important questions about comfort, safety, ethics, accessibility, and cultural meaning.
My inspiration for this research grows from my background in textile science and garment functionality, along with my interest in material behavior and human–body interaction. I am particularly curious about: • how conductive inks, films, and soft circuits are integrated on-skin • how designers address flexibility, durability, and skin compatibility • how these systems can support health, performance, communication, or expression • how culture, identity, and embodiment influence design decisions
I am also motivated by the creative potential of experimental, small-scale prototypes — where skin electronics are not only technical tools, but also explorative material experiences that allow students and makers to better understand the relationship between body, technology, and design.
References & Inspiration¶
Katia Vega is a designer and researcher best known for developing Beauty Technology, a field that transforms cosmetics, hair, nails, and skin into interactive electronic interfaces. Instead of placing technology on devices or garments, her work embeds sensors, conductive materials, and micro-electronics directly into beauty products and body surfaces, enabling subtle gestures — such as blinking, touching the skin, or moving hair — to trigger digital responses. Vega’s practice reframes beauty as a space of interaction, identity, and performance, highlighting how technology can be intimate, expressive, and culturally meaningful when it is designed to live on — and communicate through — the body.
Photo from CLOT Magazine
DuoSkin is a project developed by Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao and collaborators at MIT Media Lab and Microsoft Research that explores temporary metallic tattoos as on-skin electronic interfaces. Using gold-leaf materials and digital fabrication techniques, the tattoos function not only as decorative body art, but also as touch sensors, input controls, communication tags, and thermochromic displays that visually respond to temperature changes. The project treats the skin as both a cultural surface and a technological platform, drawing inspiration from body adornment practices such as jewelry and tattooing. DuoSkin demonstrates how wearable technology can be lightweight, visually expressive, and intimately connected to the body, opening new possibilities for interaction design that blend aesthetics, identity, and digital function.
Photo from MIT Media Lab
Tools¶
- Arduino IDE
Process and workflow¶
The sketches explore early visual concepts for a skin electronic tattoo that blends personal symbolism with wearable technology. The first drawing is for my youngest daughter, Navy, who is turning 13 years old in February. She loves cupcakes thus featuring a stylized birthday cupcake marked with the number 13. The cupcake form provides a contained, graphic shape that could function as a platform for embedding thin electronic traces within a temporary tattoo surface.
The second sketch is for my 15 year old Tre, combines a cross symbol with a basketball, representing themes of faith, protection, or grounding. The intersecting geometry lends itself to conductive pathways that could support touch-sensitive behavior when translated into flexible electronic ink for tattoo circuitry.
Design a “skin-circuit” (Interactive tattoo)
My sketches are ...
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The images show a prototype skin electronic tattoo translating the cupcake sketch into a working soft circuit. A hand-drawn tattoo design was applied directly to the skin as a visual base, and a small LED was positioned at the top of the cupcake candle to act as the output element. The LED is powered by a coin-cell battery using conductive tape to complete the circuit. When the circuit is closed, the LED lights up, transforming the drawing into an interactive wearable piece. This experiment demonstrates how simple electronic components can be integrated with body-based design, merging illustration, symbolism, and circuitry. The result functions as a temporary epidermal interface that combines personal narrative with responsive technology.
Results¶
The videos show the application of the skin electronic tattoo on paper and on actual skin. My daughter 13 cupcake tattoo showcased both iterations. However, my son Tre tattoo showed the application on paper because I could not get the led light to work on his arm.