Embodying soft wearables research

The value of engaging sensory motor skills in the design and use of smart systems is increasingly recognized. Yet robust and reliable methods for development, reporting and transfer are not fully understood. This workshop investigates the role of embodied design research techniques in the context of soft wearables. Throughout, we will experiment with how embodied design research techniques might be shared, developed, and used as direct and unmediated vehicles for their own reporting. Rather than engage in oral presentations, participants will lead each other through a proven embodied method or approach. Then small groups will create mash-ups of techniques, exploring ways that the new approaches might be coherently reported. By applying such methods to the problem of their reporting, we hope to deepen understanding of how to move towards nuanced and repeatable methods for embodied design and knowledge transfer in the context of soft wearables

Soft, embodied, situated & connected

Soft wearables include clothing and textile-based accessories that incorporate smart textiles and soft electronic interfaces to enable responsive and interactive experiences. When designed well, they leverage the cultural, sociological and material qualities of textiles, fashion and dress; diverse capabilities and meanings of the body; as well as the qualities and capabilities afforded by smart and programmable elements. Textiles behave in particular ways. They are part of culture. No matter a person's views on fashion or dress, they will have an intimate relationship with textiles, as they are one of the few products worn much of the time, close to the body. When designing wearables a designer must consider a range of requirements that do not typically demand focus when designing products that are not worn, including: a particular sensitivity for material details; an eye for fit and comfort on bodies with perhaps diverse and idiosyncratic movement capabilities; openness to a diversity of meanings that may be generated; and consideration of wearers' intimate relations with technology. In this paper we discuss the opportunities and challenges of designing and using soft wearables, applying notions of situatedness and personal meaning-making to understand and posit values in relation to outcomes. We present three design cases focusing respectively on body, material, and context; and reflect on how the different design approaches might impact use. Finally, we reflect on how embodied and collocated interactions might extend understanding of how to frame wearables research

Bipolar laddering (BLA):a participatory subjective exploration method on user experience

\u3cp\u3eNormally, the paradigm used to study user experience is based on the hypothetic-deductive method but this paradigm can present disadvantages like low results reliability or difficulties to carry out field studies. In this article, a method based on the Socratic paradigm is suggested for analyzing the user-product psychological relationship. Nowadays the Socratic paradigm is only used in some post-modern psychology schools, which applies Socratic techniques for psychological exploration and treatment. Based on this principle an expert-to-expert conversation is established between psychologist and patient. The user can be an expert in the usage of a product whilst the interviewer is an expert in UX studies. Thus, much more reliable information of the user-product relationship can be obtained. Applying this paradigm as a constructive and systematic event allows for increasing the reliability in qualitative user experience studies.\u3c/p\u3

Soft, embodied, situated & connected: enriching interactions with soft wearbles

Soft wearables include clothing and textile-based accessories that incorporate smart textiles and soft electronic interfaces to enable responsive and interactive experiences. When designed well, soft wearables leverage the cultural, sociological and material qualities of textiles, fashion and dress; diverse capabilities and meanings of the body; as well as the qualities and capabilities afforded by smart and programmable elements. Textiles behave in particular ways. They are part of culture. No matter a person’s views on fashion, dress, their own or others’ body, they will have an intimate relationship with textiles, as they are one of the few products worn much of the time, often in direct contact with the body. When designing wearables a designer must consider a range of requirements that do not typically demand focus when designing products that are not worn, including: sensitivity to material detail; an eye for fit and comfort on bodies with diverse shapes and movement capabilities; openness to a diversity of meanings that may be generated; as well as consideration of wearers’ intimate relations with technology. Soft wearables allow for greater scope within these requirements

When design meets art and Turkish culture. Lessons learned from making

Worldwide social, economic and political changes have altered not only our lives but also art and design and its meaning in society. It is time to revise our frame of reference and criteria. The questions in this paper relate to socio-cultural awareness: how and in what way can designers meet with artists as to build a bridge between different cultures? How and in what way does this meeting and active collaboration of different perceptions and approaches on identities and heritage consolidate the rich cultural diversity of Europe? Linked to the actual setting of the city of Istanbul as cultural capital of Europe in 2010, questions relating to this cultural context have been initiated by a group of art and design students from Brussels (St Lukas), Eindhoven (TU/e) and Istanbul (ITU), resulting in a short-term exhibition in Istanbul as a showcase of their artistic and design outcomes. The present paper follows the track of 3 Eindhoven design students. Within Ludvigsen’s framework of social interaction [9], it presents and analyses motivational drives and strategies of the reflective and transformative design process and prototyping, as has been set out by Hummels and Frens [3]. To conclude it takes a closer look at the differences between the educational cultures of art and design and what lessons can be learned in the future

Cognitive measurements for the Repertory Grid Technique: assuring quality in subjective experience explorations

This article analyses the Repertory Grid Technique (RGT) from its original point of view (constructivist psychology) through cognitive measurements for product and user profiling. This is a cascade profiling system that starts exploring the subjective experience (mixed information about physical, functional and emotional elements obtained from the RGT interview) through product preference profiles and then analyzes the user’s cognitive structure through cognitive complexity profiles. It is a procedure that traces implications from a top-down process in order to assure not only the quality of the product, but also the quality of the users’ mental models

Designing interactive systems for discovering and learning

Advances in technology have opened up new opportunities for intelligent systems that support learning. Most prominently, we can now move towards contextualized learning by embedding intelligence in our everyday artifacts and environments. However, these new opportunities cannot just be ‘old wine in new bottles’; we, designers, are forced to reconsider our design space. In this position paper we present our approach to this reconsideration. The presented projects vary from professional to leisure applications, are situated in different contexts from the public library to the home environment, are aimed at supporting either individual development or group work, and facilitate a range of learning activities. In this paper we present and discuss the results of an expert panel review of bachelor, master and Ph.D. projects, set up to: (1) analyze whether current learning strategies still apply to novel technologies; (2) if so, which ones, and (3) whether new learning strategies have emerged

Flow:towards communicating directional cues through inflatables

\u3cp\u3eCurrent research in wearable technologies have shown that we can use real-time tactile instructions to support the learning of physical activities through vibrotactile stimulation. While tactile cues based on vibration may indicate direction, they do not convey the direction of movement. We would like to propose the use of inflatables as an alternative form of actuation to express such information through pressure. Inspired by notions from embodied interaction and somaesthetic design, we present in this paper a research through design (RtD) project that substitutes directional metaphors with push against the body. The result, Flow, is a wearable designed to cue six movements of the wrist/forearm to support the training of elementary sensory-motor skills of physical activities, such as foil fencing. We contribute with the description of the design process and reflections on how to design for tactile motion instructions through inflatables.\u3c/p\u3

Craft qualities translated from traditional crafts to smart textile services

In this article we suggest craft and craftsmanship as an inspiration to design more sustainable smart textile services. We look into the opportunities that interactive properties and services bring into the textile and garment life cycle. We use traditional\u3cbr/\u3ecrafts as a source of inspiration for the design and as a reference to analyse emerged smart textile examples with craft experts. We demonstrate the process in the form of a dialogue between the smart textile as material, the designer-researcher and the community of craft experts. The Research through Design activities result in three iterations of the smart textile proposal, suggesting Augmented Reality as an extra layer on the textile material, and a set of design guidelines as craft qualities. We demonstrate two versions of craft qualities found and evaluated in the Muhu skirt as a traditional folk garment, as well as ‘QR-coded Embroidery’, ‘Bedtime Stories’ and ‘Textales’ as smart textile exam ples. The story of defining, evaluating and reflecting on the act of designing as the generator of knowledge illustrates how the community becomes part of the Research through Design process

Sole maker : towards ultra-personalised shoe design using voronoi diagrams and 3D printing

In this article, we describe the design of a program that allows users to create their personal shoe soles. The program has a backend which generates different components of the sole, such as the treads, the surface, the insole pattern and the contour (where the sole will be connected to the rest of the shoe). Instead of the traditio-nal fixed grids, we use Voronoi diagrams, which have another aesthetic appeal and which allow influencing the dynamic behavior of the sole. This program shows an example of the possibilities of digital fabrication (3D printing) for the personalization of material properties and behavior when combined with mathematical algorithms. Moreover, we highlight our approach and interesting algorithmic aspects like intersecting edges and contours, generating Voronoi diagrams, finding polygons, solving the Chinese postman problem, and solving the travelling salesman problem