Throughout the whole semester, I’ve been conducting field research in order to try to answer the question of: How can we use interaction design to assist in the training of aerial silks, especially in enhancing people’s proprioception?
In these last 2 blog posts, I would like to expose my findings, divided by what works for beginners and what works for advanced students. Moving forward, I expect these 2 to be protopersonas for testing future prototypes and validating my results next semesters.
Now, on to what works for beginners:
- Naming figures
Even though there are no international or national standards for naming sequences or figures, each studio should have their own set of naming conventions to facilitate shared language.
- Directory of figures
Since new students can join a studio at any time, and to lower the cognitive load of remembering previously learned sequences or figures, studios should follow Nielsen’s heuristic of Recognition rather than Recall, and document the names and pictures (or ideally, videos) of the sequences and figures in a directory accessible to all students.
- 2-colored unitard / specific accessories
For students who struggle differentiating their left from their right, teachers could provide the option to tailor a custom unitard with half a side in one color and the other half in another. This would help students clearly see and understand the relationship between each side of their body in the air, whether it be through observational learning or through own practice with a real-time communicator.
If there’s not enough budget for this, however, students could also wear a big bracelet on one hand and a big anklet on the respective leg, in order to help in differentiating left from right.
- 2-colored silk
For even more directionally challenged students, silks where each tail is a different color could be helpful, since it would be easier to explain to them “grab the red silk” instead of relying on “grab one silk … no not that one, the other one.”
- Floorial work
Learning a new wrap and understanding how it feels is not an easy task. As such, it’s always easier to simulate the silk wrapping process while on the floor, to be able to wrap your mind around where each silk and part of your body must go in order to complete it.
- Limb position references relative to our body, not the world
When communicating a new sequence or figure, teachers must not use world-relative references. It’s easier for students to understand relationships between body parts when they’re being explained to them in a way that they can see (eg. Explaining directions of turns with either “towards your pinky toe” or “towards your big toe”).
- Analogies to everyday experiences
When teaching new moves, it’s also helpful to relate the physical movements to other, everyday movements students are already used to. For example, one specific type or grip (depicted in the image), can be explained as “look at your watch, and then straighten your arm” / “move your hand to your temple as if you had a fever, and then straighten your arm” / “imagine you were a flamenco dancer, now do the typical move” — this helps the student more easily learn and remember the direction of the grip, instead of needing advanced spatial awareness.
Image from [1].
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Sources:
[1] “Half flamenco grip,” Aerial Fit Online, Accessed: Jan. 22, 2026. [Online.] Available: http://aerialfitonline.com/silks/half-flamenco-grip/
