Integrating Interactive Technology Concepts With Material Expertise in Textile Design Disciplines

Abstract

Textile and fashion designers are increasingly interested in integrating interactive technologies into their practice. However, traditional design education typically lacks support for them to develop technical digital and electronics skills alongside their expertise in materials. Refecting on outputs from an e-textile design workshop and 8-week design projects with four textile design students using an e-textile toolkit, and follow-up data collection with the students one year after the projects, we argue that starting technical explorations with raw materials results in a better understanding and more fexible use of technical knowledge. We also argue that this newly acquired knowledge is then more fully integrated with their pre-existing material knowledge as it is applied to physical interface design. The results contribute to the development of tools and approaches in supporting designers with material expertise to learn tangible interaction design skills. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Interface design prototyping.

Empowering Textile and Fashion Designers with E-Textiles for Creative Expression

“…In our previous work [8], we developed an e-textile toolkit specifically for textile and fashion designers with limited electronics knowledge. It offers support for technical aspects while enabling open-ended design exploration and promotes a material-centric approach, guiding designers to view interactive textile knowledge from a material perspective.…”