Abstract
This paper describes the construction, use and reception of e-textile prototypes and their role in generating experiences for people within or outside their usual, everyday situations. The research explores the value of co-design practices to involve community groups in creative processes and craft e-textiles pieces that can function to make technology more present and concrete for people. Participatory strategies were employed to imagine and design future contexts that people could actively contribute to as co-designers in a co-design process. The research discusses the development of the prototypes and their use as vehicles to prompt reflection in three different scenarios. The methods adopted to construct e-textile prototypes focus on integrating digital capability to highlight rich affordances for touch, emotion and feeling. It foregrounds the tangible nature of e-textiles to facilitate embodied forms of interaction and prompt actions through materials that can activate our sensory awareness. Collaborative creative action and craft methods supported material discovery and embodied learning during the ongoing negotiation between intention, action and reflection. Findings suggest that functioning e-textile prototypes with enhanced performance qualities can facilitate consistent interactions and more playful, expressive experiences. Testing prototypes in physical, home-based spaces enabled people to appropriate them for personal use contexts, which was found to extend sensorial, perceptive and embodied awareness. The research proposes that encounters with e-textile prototypes can lead to improvised behaviour and that material combinations can play a decisive role in contributing to multisensory, lively experiences.
Keywords
Craft; Improvised Behaviour; E-textile Prototypes, Lively Experiences, Design
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/eksig2023.131
Citation
Hernandez, L.(2023) Constructing e-textile prototypes to inspire improvised behaviour, in Silvia Ferraris, Valentina Rognoli, Nithikul Nimkulrat (eds.), EKSIG 2023: From Abstractness to Concreteness – experiential knowledge and the role of prototypes in design research, 19–20 June 2023, Milan, Italy. https://doi.org/10.21606/eksig2023.131
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Constructing e-textile prototypes to inspire improvised behaviour
This paper describes the construction, use and reception of e-textile prototypes and their role in generating experiences for people within or outside their usual, everyday situations. The research explores the value of co-design practices to involve community groups in creative processes and craft e-textiles pieces that can function to make technology more present and concrete for people. Participatory strategies were employed to imagine and design future contexts that people could actively contribute to as co-designers in a co-design process. The research discusses the development of the prototypes and their use as vehicles to prompt reflection in three different scenarios. The methods adopted to construct e-textile prototypes focus on integrating digital capability to highlight rich affordances for touch, emotion and feeling. It foregrounds the tangible nature of e-textiles to facilitate embodied forms of interaction and prompt actions through materials that can activate our sensory awareness. Collaborative creative action and craft methods supported material discovery and embodied learning during the ongoing negotiation between intention, action and reflection. Findings suggest that functioning e-textile prototypes with enhanced performance qualities can facilitate consistent interactions and more playful, expressive experiences. Testing prototypes in physical, home-based spaces enabled people to appropriate them for personal use contexts, which was found to extend sensorial, perceptive and embodied awareness. The research proposes that encounters with e-textile prototypes can lead to improvised behaviour and that material combinations can play a decisive role in contributing to multisensory, lively experiences.