Design And Performance Lab
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Prototype Building: Readings: Text I .... Text II .... Text III
Interaction design in smart textiles clothing and applications
Sharon Baurley
1. Introduction This chapter suggests that shifts in the textiles, electronics, and information and communication technology sectors will give rise to the area of intelligent textiles and clothing. The technical textiles industry in the the USA and the EU us growing. The western clothing market has segmented into two distinct areas: low-cost high-volume and high-end specification products, partly in response to the approaching end of the 'Multi-Fibre Arrangement'. Since 1974, the world trade in textiles and garments has been governed by the Multi-Fibre Arrangement. This agreement provided the basis on which industrialized countries have been able to restrict imports from developing countries. It expired at the end of 2004. In recent years the market in clothing has been fuelled by the emergence of new fibres, new fabrics and innovative processing technologies. This trend, in which technical innovations in textiles will become more important than the fashion content itself, is set to continue. The market also has been boosted by changes in consumer lifestyles. Many of these new developments have come from the technical textiles industry. High tech fabrics must continue to cross the boundary into everyday fashion apparel as well as into home interior furnishings to meet the challenge of future lifestyle needs and consumer requirements. Products that win will be those that enhance life quality ion some way, and have added value in terms of functionality and performance. As we advance into the knowledge age, objects and material technology are forecast to pervade our material environment. The market for technology products generally is growing. What consumers require of products is changing, gravitating towards higher-order needs that stimulate the intellect by providing experience and sensory and emotional fulfillment. Such products are set to become the new commercial imperatives of the developed world. The integration of smart functionality into clothing and other textile products will fundamentally change the cultures of clothing and interior products. It will also radically alter the relationship that people have with them and, hence, the way these products are designed and the materials used to produce them are developed. This chapter highlights key developments in computing, such as ubiquitous computing and human-computer interaction. It suggests, through current research in fashion and textiles at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (CSM), London, that the design of textile products will converge towards computing and the field of human-computer interaction design. The areas in which textile materials will develop, the ways in which different sectors of industry will need to collaborate and possibly converge for these developments to occur and the implications for the development process are also highlighted.
2. Knowledge age: dematerialisation of information and communications technology and the rise of ubiquitous intelligence.
We are advancing into a knowledge-based economy, where ideas and information mean capital, and access to information and communication systems are the drivers. Science is increasingly affecting all aspects of our lives through products and services, as the market for technology products expands. According to Philips Electronics, based in the Netherlands, ÔOur environment of the future will consist of invisible interactive systems that will be embedded in our living spaces and clothing, creating an ambient intelligence that could form a natural part of our lifeÕ (Marzano and Arts, 2003). The silver and black plastic products that currently house electronics and computers are set to vanish as technology dissolves into our material environment, i.e. interiors, buildings, furniture and clothing. As technology becomes dematerialized and embedded within these hitertho dumb products, such products will become active and intelligent. They will be the future mediators of technology. Our contact with these everyday objects will become a central focus in our lives, facilitating new methods of accessing entertainment, knowledge and communication. The following paragraphs contain examples of new methods of accessing information that have been in development over the last twenty years. The area of ubiquitous computing is involved with how people access the computer intelligence embedded within everyday objects and devices, whose user interface is intuitive. Mark Weiser, chief technologist at Xerox Parc research centre, Palo Alto, CA., USA, is the father of ubiquitous computing, which he has dubbed:
IBM (International Business Machines) has identified:
Pervasive computing is about systems that are embedded everywhere, which do not require The user to understand their inner workings.
There are various initiatives and research centers that address these shifts, for example the EU Disappearing Computer initiative, the IBM Almaden Research Centre, USA and the Massachussetts Institute of Technology, MIT Media Lab, USA. These initiatives examine the relationships we have with computer intelligence and how we interact with it. Also, there has been much activity in the last ten years in wearable computing driven by the computing sector. A good example of the ubiquitous computing vision is Smart Paper by Gyricon, which combines the best of modern computing technology with the best of established technology, the book. The vision of the paperless office has never materialized Ðm in fact, we are using more paper now than ever before. This is because no one wants to read text off a computer display; the printed word on paper simply looks better. By coating paper with electronic ink, the contents of a book or a newspaper can change on command or continuously, when it is downloaded wirelessly. Steven Mann is regarded as one of the inventors of wearable computing. A professor in the Computer Engineering Research Group at the University of Toronto, Canada, Mann has been working on his WearComp (wearable computer) invention for more than twenty years. He brought his inventions and ideas to MIT in 1991, and which contributed to the foundation of the MIT Wearable Computing Project. Mann views wearables as a Ômeans of personal empowermentÕ:
Research in the area of wearable input devices that tries to address the notion of intuitive interaction, for example, the Gesture Wrist and Gesture Pad by Sony Computer Science Laboratories. ÔThese devices allow users to interact with wearable or nearby computers by using gesture-based commandsÕ (Rekimoto, 2001). The researchers formulated a series of gestures that the wearable computer recognizes as input signals. The gesture configurations, however, are not based on what might be considered intuitive gestures, but on invented gestures. The area of affective computing, pioneered by Roz Picard at MITÕs Media Lab, has gronw out of wearable computing. Affective computing is concerned with educating a computer (wearable or non-wearable) to recognize physical and physiological patterns and translate these into emotions. For example, Òexpressions of emotion such as a joyful smile, an angry gesture, a strained voice or a change in autonomic nervous system activity such as accelerated heart rate or increasing skin conductivityÓ (Picard and Healy, 1997). By integrating sensors into clothing, a computer cans ense a userÕs emotional status, enabling it to understand what its user wants and to effect responses that adjust to the userÕs patterns. Assumptions of emotional status are made on the basis of physiological behavior, and much testing has been done on wearable computers (wearables) to test out emotion theories (an area of research in psychology, on which there are several classic theories) to attain a realistic assessment of the emotional meaning of physiological patterns. These tests are underpinned by the work of research psychologists who have been studying emotion and its relation to behaviour. PicardÕs team has developed a number of prototype affective wearables, such as earrings that measure blood volume pulses, sandals that gauge skin conductivity and glasses that check facial expression. From ubiquitous and wearable computing has arisen the field of human-computer interaction design. Interaction is the means by which users input changes to and receive feedback from an information technology (IT) system. Interaction design involves Ôhuman cognition, context of use, platform of access, task analysis and user experienceÕ (Macdonald, 2003). Interaction design comprises a distinct set of skills required to design the forms through which people can successfully use information technology in ways that are meaningful. ÒAs products and services are increasingly being created using information technology, interaction design is likely to become the key design skill of this centuryÓ (Macdonald, 2003). Examples of institutions across the globe engaged in human-computer interaction design include thye Interaction Design Department Royal College of Art, UK, the Interactional Institute, Ivrea, Italy, the Things That Think Group, MIT, USA, and the Almaden Research Center, IBM, USA.
3. New commercial imperatives
Running in parallel with, and complementary to, the rise of ubiquitous computing and access to information are changing consumer requirements. The societies of the developed world are gravitating towards a culture that will be focused firmly on human senses. As we diverge from a purely material culture, a culture firmly focused on human senses is becoming epitomized by a requirement for more intensive experiences and higher order meanings. According to MaslowÕs hierarchy of needs theory, there are two levels of need basic and meta, along which people constantly strive to move. Now that basic needs have been met in the developed world, people are striving to satisfy meta or higher-order needs. Meta needs include cognitive, aesthetic, self-actualisation and self-transcendence. Hence, the transition from making and marketing a product to developing non-tangible concepts that satisfy the demands of higher-order needs is underway and gaining momentum. Such needs Include ideas, sensory and emotional fulfilment, cultural experiences and entertainment that stimulate the intellect. ÒA new segment if emerging in the consumer market place,ÉÓthe sheddersÓ whoÉÓwant to collect experiences, not possessions.Ó (Quelch, 2002). But what constitutes an experience? Wright has proposed a framework for analyzing experience, which is made up of two parts. ÔThe first part is concerned with describing experience from four points of view which we refer to as the four threads. The second part is concerned with how we make sense in experienceÓ (Wright, 2003). An experience is described in terms of its structure, our sensory and emotional engagement, and the actions and events over time and in a place. ÒExperiences do not present themselves to us ready-made, people actively construct them through a process of sense-makingÓ (Wright, 2003). This process consists of our expectations, responses, interpretations and reflections of an experience. In The Experience Economy, Joseph Pine and James Gilmore suggest that companies are moving beyond services, into experiences to differentiate themselves. ÒThe experience economy is a new stage of economic offering.Ó Pine suggests that consumers must be drawn into the offering much like a viewer watching a theatre performance, but the viewer must also be an actor and participate: ÒThe consumer Ð sorry, the guest, must be drawn into the offering such that they feel a sensation. And to feel the sensation, the guest must actively participateÓ (Pine et al., 1999). Elements that stimulate our senses (sight, touch, sound, taste and smell) form our experiences of our environment. Products have always engendered some kind of sensorial quality. Intelligent materials will provide a new array of sensorial qualities, which will have an impact both on how we experience our surroundings and how we interact with them. An intelligent world will be one in which our interactions with products become ever more intuitive, using materials and systems that are responsive to our methods of communications, such as through touch and the use of body language. Intelligent materials will improve the control we have over our material environment and facilitate our creative interaction with it as we seek to be co-creators, tailoring experiences to correspond to our various moods. Gershenfield has stated that:
As a result, we are seeing the rise in the industrial design community of what is term termed experiential design, a method that is engaged with the value of the experience the user derives from using a product that will eventually become ubiquitous in all areas of design practice. To build a body of knowledge with which to frame experiences, designers have to investigate how people use, engage and feel about things and places.
4. Design and development: multidisciplinary collaboration
If the predictions are correct, a life where intelligence is embedded into everything is going to make the process of developing products and materials much more complex than traditionally has been the vase, as it will encroach on different sectors and involve many complex issues. ÒDozens of smart fabrics and interactive textiles-enabling technologies are under development today, yet few of the OEMs or end-users of SFIT-enabled (smart fabrics and interactive textiles) solutions know about these technologiesÓ (VDC, 2003). In other words, formal channels of communication do not currently exist between the users and the developers, not between the discrete sectors that will be involved in developing materials. The development of electronic textiles is underway in defense research agencies in the USA, but it may be some time before such textiles enter the commercial domain. To address this lack of dialogue, mechanisms are needed to bring the different industries closer. For example, the author coordinates the network Smart Textiles for Intelligent Products, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, UK. This network is a think tank for future intelligent or smart consumer products and applications in the context of societies and markets of the future. It seeks to create new formal channels of communication by bringing together all sectors that will be involved in the design, development and production of the products into a new hybrid community. Those include: application-based industries (sports, clothing, medical, automotive, gaming, architectural and interior environments), defense agencies, cognitive science, social science, computing, electronics, electrochemistry, textile and fibre engineering, the design community (fashion, textile, industrial, interior designers and architects), economists, business and market specialists, and lifestyle trend forecasters. Careful consideration has to be given to facilitating liaisons between people of different sectors, as each speaks a different language and thinks in different ways. Also, these various industries have discrete cultures, whose timescales for development and production vary hugely. Through its workshops, which bring together users with the different fields of expertise required to develop smart textile platforms, such as textile actuators and sensors and displays. This workshop brings together the potential users with the developers of materials. The second type of workshop explores the bigger picture by looking at projections of the future of society, lifestyle work, travel, economics and markets, which members use to brainstorm collectively about possible product scenarios for the future. It is envisaged that these scenarios will set a trajectory for the development of smart textiles.
5. A new language for textiles: combining the real and the virtual
Given the vision of dematerializing information and communication technology (ICT), and the fact that much of our living environment is made from textiles that are familiar and Ôfriendly,Õ soft and tactile, the ICT industries are now expressing a keen interest in textiles. One of the concerns consumers often have about new technology products is their tendency to become more sophisticated, thereby making them difficult to use and adapt to. Therefore, high tech must not make our products more complicated by having more components; rather, high tech should become seamlessly integrated into everyday objects without altering their character, and enhance their function. This section looks at how the design of textiles and clothing can converge with information and communication technology, and play a key role in this emerging genre of intelligent products and environments. Embedded intelligence will completely alter the relationship that people have with everyday products and environments. No one yet knows how people will react to or engage with technology worn on their bodies or integrated into their homes. Intelligence has no tangible form. Seamlessly embedded intelligence will change the way designers design and develop products, as the focus will no longer be solely on the physical form of the product , but about intangible features, such as the notion of experience and emotional fulfillment that affect all the senses.
If people are increasingly going to search for challenging experiences, then designers must create a context for experience. The designersÕ task will become one of giving form to virtual content. In the realm of human-computer interaction, content is seen as service, experience, communication and access to information. Intelligence will give the designer greater scope for creativity, a new tool with which to explore and apply computer intelligence in new ways. It will also challenge the role of the designer. Will the designer become more of a facilitator and enable users or weavers to be inventive by means of the technology? When the interface between the user and technology becomes truly ubiquitous, where the user does not need to understand the inner workings of the technology, then the potential of people to be inventive with the technology will be enhanced. There are a number of fundamental issues that need to be understood before technology can be applied to the body or integrated into peopleÕs homes in a way that is truly meaningful. Addressing these involves a multidisciplinary effort, which examines conventions and cultures of product use and experience.
In examining the established roles and places that objects have in our everyday lives, and the psychology of interaction with and cognition of products, the human sciences and the designer of clothing and products should be involved in the designing of systems and materials from the outset. Referring again to Smart Paper, Gershenfield has stated that:
By building on what we know of existing products, like the Smart Paper example, we can begin to extend and augment the utility of clothing and other textile products, such as furnishings and building materials. ÒAugmented reality offers designers of electronic products the powerful notion that we can interact with electronics through everyday real objects, with their inherent richness or interaction.Ó (Djajadiningrat et al., 2000). Researchers in textile, clothing and interior environment design at CSM, London, are exploring the interface of intelligent technology as well as extending the application of computer intelligence, building on existing cultures of clothing and products. Disseminating concepts and ideas in the public domain has the potential to excite market demand and, therefore, prompt the development of materials. CSM researchers are exploring the application of existing technologies, such as wireless communications, textile antennas, chromic display materials, textile switches, textile circuits and microcomponent welding technology, in new ways. For example, the authorÕs research, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board, UK, is entitled Ò Interactive and Experiential Design in Smart Products and Applications.Ó It is well known that textiles have their own language that is at once textile, sensorial and visual, which textile and fashion designers have traditionally exploited to engineer or express a look, a concept or idea, by carefully composing and manipulating the many facets of its special vocabulary. The language of textiles will be expanded exponentially as a result of the integration of electronic technologies to build smart textile systems. This research aims to discover what new codes of interaction and experience will arise when textiles are transformed from a passive into an active, intelligent state. The notion of clothing as a tool box will be conceptualized. These tool boxes will enable the user to experience a sense of being creative, to communicate more expressive and emotional messages, and to engage in social interaction and gaming. The visual look and haptic qualities of smart clothing and interior environments can be customized by the user through non-verbal channels of communication that are intuitive, such as by gesturing and touching. The research seeks to rationalize the function of ICT-content together with conventional interaction with everyday clothing and their cultures, and map one onto the other to ascertain what new interactions and experiences will arise.
The interaction design process is an iterative one, where known conventions about how people use and experience products are used to map a conceptual framework for form of content and experience. The method used here makes reference to the methodology explored by the University of Art and Design, Helsinki, Finland (MattelmŠki and Keinonen, 2001). The framework is based on observations and research on how people use, interact with and experience conventional clothing and interior environments: the social psychology of peopleÕs clothing use and behavior; sensory perception of textiles; how people communicate their emotions through non-verbal channels, such as body language; mobile phones and the internet; how expressive communication is portrayed in contemporary culture in terms of language, moods and colors. User group tests are based on a seminar in order to test conceptual assumptions. The results are fed back into the framework, which is then used to build prototype designs. These are also tested on user groups and are fed back into the framework. This concept design method is now gaining momentum, and is illustrated in Fig. 1. The following design scenarios suggest a way in which textiles and clothing can converge with information and communication technology. The scenarios make reference to a newly emerging area of expressive interaction, interpersonal and haptic (sense of touch) communication, and gaming. For example, the Super Cilia Skin is an interactive membrane that was developed at the MIT Media Lab. The skin functions as a computer output device capable of visual and tactile expression, allowing gestures to be seen or an image to be felt via an array of actuators mounted onto an elastic membrane.
Another example of interpersonal communication fusing haptic technology is ComTouch, again developed at the MIT Media Lab. ComTouch is a handheld device that translates finger pressure into vibration, thereby augmenting voice channels of communication. ÒA device that conveys touch might allow for more expressive interactions.Ó (Chang et al., 2002).
5.1 Tools for remote interpersonal communication
The aims of this scenario are to develop: a clothing concept that facilitates the sending of expressive messages to friends or partners by conveying a sense and experience of touch or presence through clothing; and clothing that is a mobile aid that facilitates the expression of other aspects of human communication, supporting the userÕs need for subtle communication and complementing existing channels of communications. This scenario is built on some conventions and cultures of clothing and textiles as expressive media. One of the main attributes of textiles is that their huge range of tactile qualities (cool/warm, hard./soft), as well as acoustic properties, has a certain effect on the way people feel and respond to them. Sensory science or psychophysics is an emerging area of experimental psychology that was first applied to product areas such as food. It is now being applied to textiles to measure peopleÕs subjective experiences of textiles when touched. Psychophysics is being developed for use in e-commerce applications where the tactile qualities of textiles need to be conveyed visually. Touch is an important part of human interaction and communication, for example, warmth and affection are often conveyed through touch. Also, people communicate through gesture or body movement, which constitute a type of language, a Ôlanguage of emotionsÕ according to Darwin (Darwin, 1965). Clothing is an emotional medium; it envelops us, is our second skin and is in some way an extension of our body. ÒDress is the way in which individuals learn to live in their bodies and feel at home in them. Dress is É an intimate experience of the bodyÓ (Entwistle, 2000). Therefore, this scenario builds on the close bond we have with our clothing, which connects people through touch and gesture and allows more epressive interactions to take place remotely. The conceptual framework for remote interpersonal communication is illustrated in Table.1.
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