Our Process/Struggle With Fabric

This project has had several iterations, which are important not only to our learning not about textiles and interfaces, but also for the ways or thinking shifted during the course of the project, from a goals-driven "how-to" perspective, to an understanding of design as a "what-if" mode of discovery and exploration.

How-to?

We began working on this project with a "how-to" model of thinking: first, by trying to identify a need in society, specifically a transportation-related need (as that was the assignment), and then trying to address that need with a specific design intervention. Our original proposal was to develop a device that could scan the RFID tags for all your items, to facilitate the packing and travel process, and minimizing the stress involved with trying to think through what to pack. (Figure 1). Soon after this inital protoype was presented, we also decided to shift "deviceless" interface, one that functioned directly on the surface of a piece of luggage.We were very pleased with ourselves.

However, as we worked on this for several weeks, the project never felt right to us. We were bothered by the fact that our "problem" wasn't really a problem at all, that this suitcase was just going to be another executive gizmo, albeit a very advanced and likely expensive one.

In addition, we weren't happy with our original interface, which seemed to just be a version of "the web" on a piece of luggage (Figure 2). View this early disaster here. :c

Further, we were relentlessly challenged by others in MDP, as well as our better judgment, to explicitly state the purpose of having this interface on fabric. "Because it's cool" was our original answer to this challenge, but soon even that wasn't enough to make us feel good about what we were doing. As the weeks went on, we couldn't reconcile our desire to design something progressive and thoughful, within the very practical and venal goals we'd set for ourselves.

One night, in front of a whiteboard, we sketched out what we were happy with, (to be sure, a much shorter list than what we disliked). That list looked something like this:

– interface on fabric material
– no new 'device'
– a non-"web" looking interface
– exploration of a new technology

What-if?

With six days until the assignment was due, we embraced this list of things we loved, and dropped the rest: the luggage, the RFID, etc. Instead we began to sketch and concept (Figure 3) around the question, "If an interface was placed on a fabric, what would it do, and how would be used?"

Eventually, we came up with several values unique to fabric: fashion, personalization, durability, and the fact that most fabric items (suits, purses, scarves) are readily available to the touch than our electronic devices. We took these values, along with our reserach into interactive fabrics, and began drafting the prototype to our handbag.

Our goal became not to solve a problem associated with a handbag, but simply to design a possible whimsical interactive experience that a user might have with her bag. What would be fun to put on there? It's a purse, what would be fashionable? What is inside her bag that she could access from the outside surface?

What would it look like if she could make notes right on the bag? Check out a sketch of how that interaction might look here.

Our final design demonstration reflects the total of our research, challenges and new thinking. On the next page, we describe in more detail what we've learned from our work on this project.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3