This Beautiful Temporary Tattoo Turns Your Skin Into A Trackpad

Talk about body surfing…

Fast reply functions on cell phones and Apple Watches have definitely sped up and simplified the electronic experience, but what if your phone’s control functions were actually on your skin? Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao, a PhD student at MIT’s Media Lab, designed trendy metallic temporary tattoos that actually act as trackpads for your electronic devices.

The circuit designs are cut from tattoo paper with a precision vinyl cutter, and then gold leaf is layered over the design to form the interactive surface.

The tattoo is applied just like a normal temporary tattoo: with water and a bit of patience.

More than just a pretty metallic statement, these tattoos actually serve as a stylish and temporary form of biohacking that allows you to control electronic devices from your arm.

Much unlike other more invasive forms of biohacking, the DuoSkin tattoos are relatively simple to implement and use, though they are inherently made to be temporary. While the average person couldn’t make one themselves, they could still be immensely successful in the mass market when paired and packaged with speakers, phones or other controllable electronic devices.

Other forms of the DuoSkin tattoos also operate as an information output and can report information about your body to your device similar to a wearable fitness tracker. And this isn’t the first venture into simple, wearable tech for Kao. She’s also created NailO, a mini-trackpad comparable to the size of your fingernail that’s applied like a decorative nail sticker.

With the development of aesthetically pleasing wearable tech options from jewelry to tattoos and nail stickers, we could all be controlling our devices remotely Iron Man-style sooner than we think!