Hi I'm Mei Zhang from Queen Mary University of London I'll be presenting our paper "Integrating
Interactive Technology Concepts with Material Expertise in Textile Design Discipline", the
paper was collaborated with Dr. Rebecca Stewart from Imperial College London and Prof. Nick
Bryan-Kinns from Queen Mary University of London. Our work is based on the fact that more and
more textile and fashion designers are becoming interested in integrating interactive technologies
into their practice. But traditional design education typically doesn't have proper support
for these design students to develop technical digital and electronic skills alongside their
expertise in materials, and commonly the smart textile clothing projects are collaborated between
technologists and designers, but the role of textile designers were often marginalized.
Textile designers' thinkings are described as internal intelligence, they tend to feel and
explore materials tangibly. And the tacit nature makes it hard to communicate beyond the field.
Therefore this unique nature led us to raise the question: how can we better support textile
designers to design with interactive technology? Our paper explored the following questions:
At the beginning of the study, we firstly conducted a survey to 18 textile and fashion
designers who had no formal training in programming or electronic engineering.
The survey is to investigate their interests and concerns in designing with interact technology,
which help to contextualize the research, and led to the understanding of how to facilitate
support in the next step. Commonly the interests are either achieving functionality
or monitoring physiological information or for design enhancement which aim to make
design more aesthetically pleasing. For their preferred design materials, metal,
yarn, thread, and knitted fabric are most popular. For sensing function, touch & proximity,
pressure, and stretch sensing were the most popular sensing interests. And for output
function, movement, lighting, and sound have the most interest. And most participants mentioned
that electronic system need to be hidden or incorporated into the materials and garments.
With the survey results we understood textile designers actual needs and concerns,
therefore we came to our second stage: develop tools for support.
We reviewed different e-textile toolkits, we found that some toolkits are designed for beginners
but have particular constraints on what people can achieve, some toolkits encourage open-ended
design but require pre-existing knowledge in e-textiles or electronics. Therefore the
design goal for our toolkits are: low entry threshold, allow for rapid prototyping,
and encourage personalization. This is the e-textile toolkit we designed called INFINITE. It
consists of functions in modular blocks, online tutorials, a variety of conductive materials,
and e-textile sensor templates. The toolkit supports movement and sound as output functions,
and supports input functions of switch, pressure sensing, positional sensing, and band sensing.
In the next stage, we conducted a study with five textile design postgraduate students from
the Royal College of Art, the study was designed in two parts: a two-day workshop
where the students learn e-textile sensor principles and interactive functions,
then eight-week design projects where participants make complete interactive
textile projects. Before the workshop we invited students to also bring their own design materials,
and they were then encouraged to explore the possibilities of their own materials in
structuring interfaces. The idea of this step is to encourage students to design interface
from their everyday-use materials. We also facilitated printing equipment for the workshop.
During the free sensor exploration, students typically intuitively interacted with materials
without a clear target and gradually form design ideas as the hand-on work took shape.
Crafting sensors with various materials help students to build a deeper understanding and
flexible use of sensor principles. One popular way of forming e-textile sensors was to combine
the usual materials with conductive materials, and imitating the structure of template sensor.
Some students started by handling materials without a clear target or functions they were
going to achieve, when the textile took shape they sought sensing possibility by shaping or playing
with the textile. The other method is by adding conductive elements after the textile is shaped,
this method prioritizes textile constructions, and sensing functionality may be achieved by
adding conductive elements once the textile is made. After the workshop, four students
continued to eight week design project. They went through three stages to complete their projects.
The first stage was researching, starting by researching design concepts, color scheme,
materials, and interaction examples. The next stage is experimenting stage,
in which students test the sensors and actuators while constructing textile samples, adjusting
the physical design according to the technical affordances. The toolkit saves students effort
from building circuitry and learning programming, helping to keep their focus on design itself.
In the final stage, students mostly implemented and finalized their project independently. This
co-development of sensors and textiles makes the interactive textile more integrated. For example,
the participant chose a hollow material for the puppet's glove.
Considering that this material is stretchy, she crocheted conductive yarn into a strip
and inserted it into the hollow material to form a stretch sensor. In students final results,
interactive systems were not presented as separated from textile design and something
added as a second process, instead they were integrated during the textile construction process
and related closely to the material properties. For example the student combined air inflation
with soft and inflatable silicone to achieve a level of breathing and softness on the design.
the participant designed five different interesting
motions to the series of textile sculptures.
This students used stretch and movement interaction to present storytelling of
the annoying gum on her textile design. 14 months after the study, we revisited three participants
to investigate whether they have been using interactive technology in design after the
project, and what ongoing impacts the project had. We found that all three students experimented with
digital elements in their later design practice, the participation of the study has broadened
their design vision and interactive technology has become a part of their design thinking.
The open-ended approach and toolkit mutually reinforced a flexible use of technology
and resulted in a more integrated design. We found that demonstrating a variety of
example interactive projects, sensors, and actuators relating to textile and clothing
design broaden students design vision, and help to generate new concrete design ideas. And guiding
textile designers to start technical exploration from familiar materials increases their curiosity
in technology. The fast prototyping toolkit supports ideation and iterative adjustment of
the whole design. For more about our study and the results, please go check out our paper. Thank you!