hi i'm antony i'm going to present
pocket view through fabric information
displays
this work was completed at the
university of waterloo with rishav
nikhita aakar omid and dan
it is sometimes inconvenient to view
information on a phone when it's
inaccessible
for example when a phone is placed
inside a pocket and it vibrates the user
needs to retrieve the phone out of the
pocket to view the notification
this retrieval process can be cumbersome
while holding a shopping bag or biking
potential solutions include wearing a
smart watch or a headphone to access
smartphone information
we explore an alternative idea of
viewing information through the fabric
of a pocket using low resolution bright
led matrix displays a concept we call
pocket view
prior work on on body displays attaches
a display element on top of an existing
clothing
dierk designed variable e-ink displays
that can be attached to a t-shirt pocket
mauriello attached flexible led display matrix
onto user's back to show fitness stats
by shining it through a cotton diffuser
material
Schneegass showed a preliminary prototype of
an led matrix shining through a white
t-shirt fabric
but their work focuses on finding
suitable locations for wearable displays
and evaluating the efficacy of
visualizing off-screen targets
but do not focus on the through fabric
nature of these displays
we conduct an online survey to find
pocket locations in clothing
items stored in them and need to access
information from a smartphone
Participants were asked if they were
clothing with pockets at different body
locations
for example the front upper thigh area
as shown in the image
if they answered yes they also mentioned
the different objects that they store in
that particular pocket location
this graph shows the different
objects stored in pockets
while
phone key tissue and wallets are the
most common objects stored in the pocket
women store phones in a wide range of
locations which include the stomach
upper thigh back of the leg and side of
the leg areas
men store large objects and phones more
often in the upper thigh area than women
we then ran a technical experiment to
understand the ability of an led matrix
to shine through common garment fabrics
we chose 40 different samples of woven
and knitted fabrics made from different
materials
lighting patterns from an 8x8 led matrix
was made to shine through each fabric
sample
and images were captured by using a dslr
camera and a light meter was also used
to measure the transmittance
the captured images were then processed
to obtain two metrics transmittance and
irregularity
transmittance measures the amount of
light passing through the fabric whose
value ranges from zero to one where zero
corresponds to no light transmission and
one corresponds to full light
transmission
irregularity measures the
unevenness of light transmission across
the fabric
higher value means transmission value is
less
even across the fabric
these four
fabric samples have a transmission value
of 0 which means it completely blocks
the light from the led matrix
these two fabrics have high value of
irregularity because of the patterning
in them
all these fabrics have a full
transmission value of one
so they let all the light pass through
it
they also have lower irregularity values
because of the lack of patterns in them
our main prototype uses an 8x8 rgbw led
matrix a microcontroller battery and a
bluetooth
this form factor resembles that of a
phone case or a wallet
this enables a wide range of
applications
for example when a notification arrives
on a phone it sends information to the
prototype through bluetooth to display a
corresponding icon
we also experiment with different form
factors of pocketview prototypes that
resembles objects stored in pockets
the leftmost image shows a headphone
case placed inside a waist pocket
a pen placed in a shirt pocket
a key fob displaying a social message
when placed in a sweater pocket
and a high-res
phone display displaying time when
placed in a cotton pant pocket
we demonstrate different applications of
through fabric devices
in the shopping bag application the user
can view
weather updates when their hands are
encumbered with a shopping bag
a single tap
helps to view information and double tap
dismisses the display
similarly in an exercise application a
headphone case inserted in a waist
pocket
displays instructions for an exercise
routine
we ran a user study with 12 participants
to understand
and evaluate our initial through fabric
prototypes
we chose two baselines for our
experiment one baseline is a standard
phone prototype which displays an 8x8
pixelated black on white imagery on a
standard phone
and a pdlc transparent pocket in which a
pdlc film is sewn into a jean pocket
whose transparency can be controlled by
supplying current to it
these two extreme baselines were chosen
to be
compared and contrasted with our main
prototype which uses an 8x8 led bright
matrix
in terms of overall preference 92
percent of the 92 percent rated four or
more for the led matrix whereas rated
only 67 percent for the standard phone
prototype
when your hands are encumbered six
prefer the pdlc prototype whereas five
preferred the led case
some of the useful tasks that can be
done using through fabric devices
include controlling music
reading messages and navigating maps
led case was preferred for managing
privacy and fashion aesthetics
through fabric devices enable viewing
information through clothing and have
potential usage while walking running
and biking
for more information
please refer to the paper