According to the Venture Development Corporation’s market report on smart textiles, development in products is slow, despite the hype that has grown up around over the last ten years. VDC cites a number of reasons for this: that the killer applications for smart textiles are unknown, and consumer education. It is very difficult to forecast what will be the take-up of new products, or how people will respond to them and integrate them into their lives. Such foresight is especially difficult to obtain when it comes to putting technology on the body. I, therefore, believe that using design to gain new understandings about people’s behaviour and what they are capable of doing is very valuable in generating new design concepts for consumer fashion wearable technology.
We adopt and appropriate material products to define ourselves. Digital communications technologies increasingly share common attributes with material products in terms of how they enable people to construct an identity, to be expressive and form communities. The revolutionary growth of digital media and communications is allowing groups and individuals to collaborate, create and share their own material.
When material products converge with digital technology and materials science, what will happen? We can't anticipate all of the end-use applications in advance because what actually happens in practice is the emergent outcome of user dynamics. How can we gain prior knowledge of emergent behaviour? This new genre of products will require input from an array of sectors. How do industries who do not have a history of working together, communicate and collaborate?
I am concerned with new types of design products that involve the fusion of the real and digital, and how materials science can realise this interplay. I am interested in how design can be pivotal in brokering collaborative activity between these disparate experts, as well as with users/consumers, and provide new ways for digital and materials science to ideate new product concepts and hence new markets. I am interested in ‘design for appropriation', and in how users can design what they consume.
Probing the users: I use design methods to mobilise tacit knowledge from people about their aspirations, desires, and experiences for the purposes of ideation and evaluation of concepts. Methods include generative storyboarding, low-fi mocks and installations, and prototypes deployed in user studies that help gain insight into the catalysts and drivers of new products, and potential emergent behaviour.
Probing the developers: I use design as a way of thinking to scope unknown territory and design concepts. I utilise design methods to mobilise learned knowledge from experts to facilitate knowledge creation and sharing, and shared understanding as a part of multi-disciplinary working. Methods include discussion sketching, bodystorming and role play, storyboarding and annotated timelining, and emodying ideas through mock-ups, as a means to derive latent concepts.
Consumer requirements of products are changing. The transition from making and marketing a product to developing non-tangible concepts that satisfy the demand of higher order needs such as ideas, sensory and emotional fulfilment, cultural experiences and entertainment which stimulate the intellect, is underway and gaining momentum. The societies of the developed world are gravitating towards a culture that will be focused firmly on human senses; it is becoming epitomised by a requirement for more intensive experiences and higher order meanings. As technology becomes dematerialised and embedded within our material culture, they will be the future mediators of technology, facilitating new methods of accessing entertainment, knowledge and communication. Products and environments have always stimulated our senses (sight, touch, sound, taste and smell) by virtue of the different materials that comprise them; these influence our experiences and perceptions of our culture. Smart materials will provide a whole new set of sensorial qualities, which may transform our experiences and interactions with the material world. Intelligent materials will improve our control over our material environment and facilitate our creative interaction with it enabling us to be co-creators, customising experiences to correspond to our moods, dreams and aspirations. For example, in the same way that youth groups create new ‘languages’ or codes using SMS, so smart products will need a design palette or language, which users can co-opt, adapt and assign their own meanings to, or make their own meanings with. Designers need a deeper level of knowledge about around people’s perceptions and experiences, and need to investigate how people use, engage and respond to things and places to build a body of knowledge with which to frame experiences, in order to design and develop products that are more carefully tuned to people’s needs and desires.
I am concerned with the process of eliciting consumer desire in order to gain insight into the catalysts and drivers and potential emergent consumer behaviour for this new genre of clothing. I do this through the use of design probes with users, enabling them to be involved in both the ideation and evaluation of concepts. Traditionally, designers have drawn upon their own tacit knowledge, based upon their own experiences of the world and our material culture. The aim of participative design activity is to engage potential users as co-developers, and tap into and mobilise their tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is knowledge that is instinctive, is comprised of habits, culture and beliefs, and is very difficult to articulate. By developing and employing generative tools and techniques to create conditions in which people can experience, play and dream, new insights and inspiration is gained from them in order to help define parameters for product concepts for the future that fit closely with user’s dreams, desires and aspirations.
Participative design methodology
Participative design follows an iterative path. In order for participants to inspire us, we need to inspire them. To do this we provide them with insights into the state of the art of smart materials and digital technology. Participants are asked to keep a visual diary of their day-to-day activities with which to tell a story. Visual storytelling enables participants to develop mood boards that will tell a personal story about their relationship with their material culture, habits, preferences, and aspirations. Low-tech mock-ups of product concepts are developed based upon these mood boards, which participants can modify and interact with. ‘Quick and dirty’ prototypes that are robust are developed based upon findings from the sessions involving the mock-ups. Participants are invited to use, interact with and evaluate these prototypes.
Design as a way of thinking
I am also interested in the use of design as a way of thinking to scope this unknown territory. This new genre of clothing will require input from an array of sectors that do not have a history of working together. Through my work I also use design to facilitate multi-disciplinary working as a way to mobilise expert knowledge; during projects we have engaged with the concept of ‘thinking and knowing’, i.e., knowledge and the considered application of knowledge, and find creative ways of accessing their respective knowledge bases in order to manage knowledge flows between people, and to facilitate knowledge creation and sharing, and shared understanding.
The concept of design probes has been in use by this research group since 2003. These methods have been explored and developed in the projects on the following pages: The Emotional Wardrobe, Communication-Wear, Smart Textiles Network.
DesignProbes