Projects per year
Abstract
Since the LilyPad toolkit made crafting garments more accessible, various toolkits and techniques, like iron-on textile circuits and digital embroidery, have been suggested to facilitate the co-design of wearable technology.
Despite these efforts, commercial wearables are still mostly limited to health-related use cases.
However, wearables are inherently social, as any clothing is part of one’s social identity.
For a lasting impact, wearable designs need to address an individual’s culture and personal style.
Congruently, scholars suggest that toolkits have to “better accommodate the everyday” and fit within existing clothing.
As any design process has to introduce constraints due to the infinite number of possible use scenarios, we suggest tailored creation kits as an addition to open-ended toolkits.
In a field study on wearing technology for social interaction, we engaged with Nordic university students and their cultural practice of wearing dashingly adorned boilersuits.
We co-designed Digi Merkki, an interactive clothing patch for social interactions.
The patches have a small colour screen and LEDs, can be controlled through conductive yarn, and are wirelessly connected to trade digital pictures and play LED animations based on social ties and proximity.
However, Digi Merkki comes as a creation kit so that every user can assemble a personalised patch.
Each kit contains the electronics patch prototype, various textiles and a battery.
While participants received detailed instructions for the process, they could choose the cover fabric and design (e.g. open vs covered LEDs), three digital pictures to start with and a unique colour for the LEDs. Furthermore, the students chose the patch’s location on the body.
Therefore, our creation kit used the advantages of handcrafting toolkits, i.e. personalisation and leveraging pre-existing skills.
This approach contributed to integrating the patch into the students’ everyday practices. Personalisation helped students stand out through their creations, and diverse modifications based on different skillsets inspired others.
Consequently, students adapted new practices with this digital form of expression and interaction. They playfully explored the boundaries of their community practices with stealing and spamming pictures and integrated their digital practice of memeing into their clothing practices.
We suggest an increased research effort into creation kits based on our example of combining crafting practice and personalisation to embed wearable technology into cultural practices.
Designing technology for actual everyday wear needs more knowledge about supporting processes that aim beyond openness and novelty but enable embedding into the everyday practice of wearing clothes.
Original language | English |
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Publication status | Published - 2022 |
MoE publication type | Not Eligible |
Event | ACM SIGCHI Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Virtual, Online, New Orleans, United States Duration: 30 Apr 2022 → 5 May 2022 |
Conference
Conference | ACM SIGCHI Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems |
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Abbreviated title | ACM CHI |
Country/Territory | United States |
City | New Orleans |
Period | 30/04/2022 → 05/05/2022 |
Keywords
- Social Wearables
- Creation Kits
- Research-through-Design
- Social Practices
- Co-Design
- Field Study
- Cultural Dress
- Social Computing
- Wearable Computing
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Digi Merkki: An Interactive Clothing Patch Creation Kit for Socio-cultural Dress'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 2 Finished
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FutureMethods: Methodology for HCI evaluations of possible futures
Salovaara, A. (Principal investigator), Rosen, A. (Project Member), Sanchez, C. (Project Member), Epp, F. A. (Project Member), Rosen, A. (Project Member), Moesgen, T. (Project Member) & Pouta, E. (Project Member)
01/09/2020 → 31/08/2024
Project: Academy of Finland: Other research funding
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Digital Aura: Crafting a Digital Representation of Self in the Physical World
Takala, T. (Principal investigator), Kantosalo, A. (Project Member), Epp, F. A. (Project Member), Jain, N. (Project Member) & Hirskyj-Douglas, I. (Project Member)
01/09/2017 → 31/08/2021
Project: Academy of Finland: Other research funding
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Augmenting Appearance with Wearable Technology: Open-ended Practices-oriented Design for Adornment and Identity as Routes to Adoption
Epp, F. A., 2023, Aalto University. 188 p.Research output: Thesis › Doctoral Thesis › Collection of Articles
Open Access -
Adorned in Memes: Exploring the Adoption of Social Wearables in Nordic Student Culture
Epp, F. A., Kantosalo, A., Jain, N., Lucero, A. & Mekler, E., 30 Apr 2022, CHI 2022 - Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, p. 1-18 18 p. 364Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference article in proceedings › Scientific › peer-review
Open AccessFile3 Citations (Scopus)141 Downloads (Pure)