How do making and materials contribute to our understanding of personal data representations? To explore how materials, data, and humans collaborate to produce physical data representations, we created a series of artifacts from personal data we collected (about commuting, forgetting, and busy-ness) in different media: yarn and sound.
We used these data artefacts to interrogate the boundaries between maker and interpreter, and to ask who—or what—has the authority to interpret narrative and assign meaning to data things? We exchanged these artefacts without providing guidelines for how to interpret them in order to study where the boundary between maker and interpreter emerges. In exchanging the artefacts, we explored the role of the interpreter as a re-maker and how multiple narratives can productively co-exist. We conclude with a discussion about how reimagining the roles of maker and interpreter might lead to new interactions with personal data narratives.
To learn more about our work, read the full paper here or watch a video presentation above.
Recently, LOOMIA and the Unstable Design Lab jointly ran a survey that asked people working in e-textiles (or more broadly, “electronics + textiles”) how they liked to talk about their work. LOOMIA is a flexible electronics start-up creating prototyping components for creative technologists, designers, and all sorts of e-textiles folks, hence the interest in how we label e-textiles and related work. LOOMIA has posted on their blog about the differences and overlaps between terms like “e-textiles”, “smart textiles”, and “functional fabrics”, but we wanted to test some theories about how people are actually using these terms.
The survey asked people to think about the following terms:
E-textiles
Smart textiles
Functional fabrics
Soft circuits
Flexible circuits/devices
FHE (Flexible Hybrid Electronics)
Stretchable electronics
Participants were asked which terms they had heard of, if they preferred or disliked any on the list, and if they saw any differences between the terms. They could also add any terms that we had missed.
We received a wide variety of responses, representing a range of age, genders, nationalities, experience levels, and professional backgrounds!
Demographics
Total Participants – 63
0 years of e-textile experience – 21 1+ years of e-Textile experience – 42
Gender – Female (28), Male (33), Non-Binary (2)
Age – 18 to 75
Occupation – Homemaker to CEO
In particular, the terms “e-textiles” and “flexible hybrid electronics” seemed to stand at two extremes of a language spectrum.
Breakdown of self-identified career paths of participants: 20 creative technologists (32%), 19 engineers (30%), 24 who indicated other paths (38%)
Findings
30/63 did not like Stretchable Electronics
26/63 did not like Soft Circuits
31/63 did not like Flexible Hybrid Electronics
17/63 did not like Flexible Circuits and Devices
14/63 did not like Functional Fabrics
17/63 did not like Smart Textiles
5/63 did not like E-Textiles
Because we also collected demographic information on participants’ career paths and asked them to categorize their own work, we wanted to see if there were any differences between the disciplines represented in our field. The main categories were “engineer”, “creative technologist”, or “artist/craftsperson”, but participants also added “venture capital”, “HR”, “textile designer”, and other roles.
What Engineers Liked
7/19 liked E-textiles/Smart Textiles (tied)
3/19 liked Flexible Hybrid Electronics
2/19 liked Soft Circuits
What Creative Technologists Liked
18/20 liked E-Textiles
10/20 liked Smart Textiles
7/20 liked Soft Circuits
5/20 liked Functional Fabrics
2/20 liked Flexible Hybrid Electronics
What Other Careers Liked
8/24 liked Smart Textiles
7/24 liked E-Textiles
2/24 liked Stretchable Electronics
1/24 liked Soft Circuits
Digging deeper into our data, many participants generously gave time to answer some free-response questions on their language associations with “e-textiles” or “flexible hybrid electronics”. By and large, people were concerned about future e-textiles/flexible device products being washable, both as an essential criteria for usability and as a technical challenge to overcome with new materials.
Language Associations
Q: What do you believe are essential features or descriptors of future e-textiles/flexible electronics? (For example: thin, washable, soft, etc.)
Word cloud of all participants’ responses to the question. Larger font size means a higher frequency in responses. Red words indicate “anti” features where participants mentioned what they didn’t want.
Q: What sort of products do you associate with flexible or wearable devices? These can be existing products or future hopes.
Word cloud of all participants’ responses to the question, with some grouping into certain topics (e.g. “monitoring” and “tracking data” were grouped into “tracking/surveillance”). Larger font size means a higher frequency of the word/topic, while colors are randomized.
We also see some interesting disagreements about how much the “e-textiles / smart fabrics” label overlapped with the “flexible / wearable” label. While most people said that they’re either related or even nested categories, a minority of respondents associated the two with different materials or fabrication techniques. A key quote from a dissenting opinion:
“fabrics are made of fibers that can easily be manipulated whereas flexible and wearable devices are made of plastics or hard materials”
anonymous survey respondent
which points out that many of our current wearable devices like smartwatches don’t use fabrics (or if they do, there aren’t integrated electronics in the fabric).
Conclusion
Returning to our initial hypothesis, it seems that our hunch was wrong about engineers preferring terms with “circuits” or “electronics” over terms that focused on “textiles”! But the data shows a much more nuanced picture of how people are thinking about the future of e-textile technologies. We see folks grappling with using language that is specific and descriptive (e.g. “electronics” implies semiconductor devices and the associated materials and processes, while “textiles” implies yarns/fiber and knitting/weaving/felting/etc.) versus language that is general and accessible. Broad terms like “e-textiles” and putting the “smart” label before a product category are easily understood by a general audience, but for those working within the industry, these terms can become “buzzwords” which are vague and unhelpful for describing the technical details of their work.
We presented these initial findings and analyses in a webinar, hosting a town-hall-style discussion with interested survey respondents. Again, there was a diverse range of experiences in the virtual room. Speaking face to face, we wanted to get the room thinking about their language use when talking to others in e-textiles. Since the survey focused on people’s language use within their own professional contexts, we were especially interested in any experiences that people had collaborating across disciplines when working in e-textiles. From one participant on the differences in working with textile engineers vs. electrical engineers:
“textile engineers tend to have a broader perspective as they can see concrete applications (wearables / clothing). Whereas [electrical engineers] may be a little more broad technically: e.g. use of flexible circuits in detecting stretch.”
anonymous webinar attendee
While our dataset is by no means comprehensive, these survey results were a fascinating exploratory poke into the interdisciplinary nature of the emerging e-textiles field and the future of its industry. We hope that sharing these findings will help us all to speak across professions and consider different perspectives, particularly in collaborative settings, when discussing soft, flexible, and textile based circuits of all shapes and sizes.
We’d like to shout out the following people for their contributions and thoughtful responses:
Ricardo O’Nascimento
Andrea C
Robert Tietze
Vicente Jorge Sanchis Rico
J.J.M Geurts
Michelle Farrington
Jim Stathis
Lina Stephens
Radoslav Hanic
Charlie Lindahl
Amy Jenkins
Darryl
Md Mehdi Hasan
Qianwen Yu
Lori Ann Wahl
Michael Stewart
@cooolrunnings
Pranav Sai
James Ochieng
Eddie Yam (Intertek HK)
Gil M
Muhammed Tawhidur Rahman
Bobby Bedi
Collaboration
If you’d like to learn more about LOOMIA’s side of this collaboration, please check out their website and blog (where this article was also posted). You can also learn more about their founder and our main collaborator on this study, Maddy Maxey.
A Fabric that remembers is a fabric that remembers how and when it was pressed. It does this using 6 embedded pressure sensors and a microconroller that trasmits data to the web. It is a fabric with its own website, which you can explore here:
The fabric is currently on display at Accenture Labs in San Francisco and uses both the fabric and tablet to visualize touch in realtime. The constraint that guided the work was to get as much of the circuitry as possible embedded into the fabric. Thus, for the e-textiles nerds out there, you might be happy to know that all of the wiring for the resistive sensing and voltage dividing is embedded into the fabric by way of using different resistance yarns. We have included all of the swatches I made in preparation for the final design for reference.
Authors on this project are Laura Devendorf, Sasha De Koninck, Shanel Wu and Emma Goodwill.
This image shows the fabric as it would be rendered as a circuit. The structure consists of six voltage dividing circuits wired in parallel to a common power and ground. The first resistor is a fixed value resistor and the second is a variable resistor that changes measure with the application of force.The fabric on view at the Center for Heritage Arts and Textiles (CHAT) in Hong Kong as part of the “Interweaving Poetic Code” exhibit.
Unfabricate is a project that anticipate the future of e-waste compounding with textile waste. Shanel Wu leverages the quality of textiles as being adhesive-less to envision new methods for designing smart textiles for disassembly.
As designers, what do with the struggles or difficulties that design cannot solve? How might our design processes themselves orient us towards solutions in spaces where we might need other forms of witnessing or attending? In a project called “Making Design Memoirs” we explored these questions through and within experiences of parenting. What we suggest in the work is that Making Design Memoirs might be a way to readapt design as a mode of storytelling, specifically a way to tell personal stories about how something feels, felt or may be felt differently in the future. The concept emerged from a very personal collaboration between Laura Devendorf, Kristina Anderson, and Aisling Kelliher. Specifically, we started the project as an attempt to understand the limits of design–what does it mean to design if it’s not about making something “better” or “easier.” Specifically, we thought back on our experiences as mothers and tried to develop methods to investigate that experience through design. In this way, we try to make “memoirs” with objects that tell of our felt experiences and that bring out practices of witnessing and honoring instead of resolving.
Knotting began for me as a way to mark time. But as our lives changed because of the impact of the coronavirus, knots evolved into an exercise to ease anxiety. It was now a way to mark time and emotion. My relationship to time and memory has changed a lot since we began ‘staying-at-home’. I feel the passage of time more acutely. I have a hard time remembering when something happened. Maybe it was only one week ago, but it feels like months have passed.
Uncertainty and instability have become trendy words because of the coronavirus. The things in our lives that we perceived as stable or certain are no longer seen or felt that way. I wanted to explore this idea of uncertainty/instability in relation to garments and textiles. Garments are often referred to as a second skin, or security blanket. What happens when they fall apart? Sweaters and knitwear have the potential to unravel. Clothing can wear out, or tear. But I wanted to think about designing for falling apart. Or more specifically, dissolving.
What if the act of wearing a garment causes it to fall apart? The moisture produced by our bodies has the potential to cause a garment to come apart, or in this case, dissolve.
‘Knotting. Knotted. Knot’ is the first iteration of this research. ‘Knotting. Knotted.Knot’ uses water soluble embroidery interfacing as the ground for knots to accumulate. Instead of making an identifiable garment, I instead kept the embroideries in the abstract forms that they took, expressing the state of the emotions that the knots are keeping a record of.
The Research Lab of Ambiguous Futurology creates heirlooms for the future. At the lab, Sasha studies future scenarios and creates wearables in response to those futures. We are living in uncertain times, some might even say, ambiguous times. The Internet of Things is evolving into the Internet of Disposable Things. Our technology is becoming smaller and cheaper to produce. We are creating so much waste, and have no ways of processing it. What is the future we are creating for ourselves?
At the Research Lab of Ambiguous Futurology, we want to create objects for you to preserve for future use. An antique heirloom is traditionally a used object which is preserved to be passed down to future generations to treasure, but its usefulness has typically passed. A future heirloom is an object whose usefulness has not been used up. You preserve your future heirloom for future use. And once it can no longer serve its purpose, it must be repurposed, recycled or revised.
Tell us about a future, and we’ll make you something to wear for that future.*This call is for Future Heirlooms that will be a part of an exhibition from September 23-December 16, 2022. You will not receive your Future Heirloom until after the exhibition has closed in December*.
Some friends and I recently collaborated on a written piece devoted to the topic of crafts-machine-ship, which is our rethinking the relevance and meaning of “craft” within the field of human-computer interaction. Led by Kristina Anderson, a good friend and fellow TC2-tamer, the piece brings together from design, philosophy, textiles, and electronic music to express how we want more from our machines. In doing so, we consider the wisdom of luddites, describe a craft machine as swimming, and playfully interject the word “sammunsurium” which is an amazing and untranslatable Danish word that I have come to learn means something of a beautiful mess. you can read it here:
In 2017, the Unstable Design Lab received a grant from the National Science Foundation to develop AdaCAD, a software tool that would facilitate weavers who needed to integrate circuitry into their design.
This post includes a transcript of our first presentation about AdaCAD, delivered at CHI 2019. In this presentation, we talk about the rationale, process, and features of AdaCAD. Long story short, we presented how we learned that providing specific support for multilayer weaving and viewing your weave in terms of the draft as well as the paths of the individual yarn types within the design could go far to support weavers, and non-weavers, entering this emerging design space.
Since giving the talk in 2018, we have contributed development and you can view our current documentation and use the tool here: https://unstabledesign.github.io/
