The Emotional Wardrobe | scoping unknown territory The Emotional Wardrobe was one of twenty one clusters funded by the EPSRC/AHRC Designing for the 21st Century initiative in 2005. The central idea of the Cluster was The Emotional Wardrobe (EW), in which the conventions and cultures of fashion, as an expressive, emotional and communicative medium, are extended by integrating computer intelligence and digital communications. Similarly, digitally–augmented clothing is a paradigmatic goal of ubiquitous computing (ubicomp), the approach to computer design that takes advantage of mobile technology, wireless networks and personalisation. The Emotional Wardrobe is a fashion tool to explore and express the human condition, and it reveals and addresses emergent social, environmental, personal and technological concerns. It creates new challenges for design thinking in fashion and in computing. Our aim was to establish an interdisciplinary community centred on these themes, willing and able to advance design research by combining conceptual work with practical design examples and working prototypes. In our vision of ubiquitous computing, digital systems will extend to clothing (and other everyday objects) via smart textiles and materials, which means that fashion will become a mediator of technology. To date much ‘wearable technology’ has been developed by the electronics and computing science sectors and has utilised clothing as a carrier of entertainment and communication systems. Less research has focused on the exploitation of technology for aesthetic, communicative and expressive purposes. “What we are talking about here is a revolution, one which will require the electronics industry to think emotionally…we can not expect the fashion industry to adapt itself to technology. Rather the technology industry will have to learn how to deal with fashion.’ (New Nomads, Stefano Marzano, Philips, 2001) The fashion industry is not exploiting the potential that mobile and computational technology could offer, although notable exceptions include Elise Dee Co., MIT, USA, Cute Circuit and David Agnelli from the Interaction Design Institute, Ivrea, Italy, 5050 Studio Ltd., New York. To address the emotional application of technology to the body, a union of a number of industries is required. The integration of smart functionality into clothing and other textile products will fundamentally change cultures of clothing, peoples’ relationships with them, and the way clothing is designed. The development process will necessitate information and communication technology (ICT) cultures to be synthesised with established cultures of clothing and clothing design. This will require a multi-disciplinary approach, transcending the current boundaries, languages and processes of the industries involved. The EW cluster aimed to scope this unknown design space. This cluster brought together the disparate and largely unassimilated disciplines of fashion and technology, and asked and assessed whether such a merger could bring added value to the consumer and the industries involved, and what this will mean to the process of research, creation and production of an Emotional Wardrobe. The project was initiated and hosted by Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London. In the Wardrobe was Sharon Baurley, Martin Woolley, Stephen Scrivener and Lisa Stead of Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, Erik Geelhoed of Hewlett-Packard Labs, Phil Gosset of Vodafone Future Studies, Matthew Chalmers of the Department of Computing Science at University of Glasgow/Equator IRC, Peter Excell of the School of Informatics at University of Bradford, Joan Farrer of the School of Fashion and Textile Design at Royal College of Art, Jeremy Pitt and Petar Goulev of the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at Imperial College London, and Christian Heath of the Management Centre at King’s College London. This genre of product will obviously necessitate multi-disciplinary cooperation and collaborative work. This paper also describes methodologies that attempt to use design and creative techniques of the designer’s repertoire, as a means to facilitate collaborative efforts of this nature. Generative techniques are used to aim to foster a shared understanding in brainstorm discussions, as well as managing knowledge flows and knowledge or ideas generation, again by mobilising the learned knowledge of individual members of the cluster. Design as a way of thinking: Using design to facilitate multi-disciplinary collaboration in order to scope unknown design spaces Given that many new design spaces are on the horizon due to social and cultural shifts, economic and consumption patterns and trends as well as technological advances, the necessity for increased levels of collaboration between industries and the convergence of sectors, begs the question of how we collaborate. One issue is how we gain insight into the needs of tomorrow, as they become more complex; and another issue is how we respond to those needs. The following methods experiment with design and generative methods that aim to create the conditions for cross-sectoral collaboration. In order to manage multi-disciplinary cooperation during workshop activity the group needs to engage with the concept of ‘thinking and knowing’, i.e., knowledge and the considered application of knowledge, and experiment with creative ways of accessing their respective knowledge bases. The aim is to use design as a way of thinking, i.e., thinking through doing, and as a means to generate knowledge and a shared understanding. Techniques include visualisation and embodiment of ideas and possible solutions, in which design students are involved. The success of these activities relies heavily on effective facilitation. ‘Bring and tell’ | In order to get everyone thinking about fashion and their own clothing, and to think about why they choose particular garments or outfits, cluster members brought in a favourite garment to discuss issues around: Whether it evokes any particular emotions or memories; whether it has a story; whether it communicates their identity; as well as issues around when they wear it, and how it makes them feel. ‘Scrapbox Challenge’ | To continue the exploration of personal choice during the ‘Scrapbox Challenge’ we each selected a garment that we disliked or had a negative emotional reaction to, from a selection of second-hand clothes; a negative response is the strongest reaction, as we know what we don’t like more than what we do, making the evaluation process easier. We evaluated its negative features in terms of its mis-match to our identity or interests. We explored ways in which we could reconstruct the garment to make it acceptable or desirable, to make it ‘fit’ our identity, lifestyle, occupation or preferences. We thought about garment personalities, to create new or enhanced interactions. We attributed a personality to create a garment biography. We each explored what could be added to the garment to enhance its personality, as well as how the garment personality would behave in various situations, and to different people. Using other garments, fabrics and haberdashery we recreated the garment to fit our preferences. We transplanted parts of other garments, added surface details or reshaped the garment cutting and adding pieces of fabric. The finished garments were photographed. In small groups we discussed the changes made and why they were made; how participants made their decisions; how the meaning created by the maker was perceived by others in the group. We also discussed the experience of deconstructing and reconstructing, and whether participants, particularly from non-design backgrounds, found the task intimidating or easy. ‘Role play’ or bodystorming | We explored the problem statements through scenario-building, for which we took a divergent approach. As it is a given that garments are worn most of time, the aim was to concentrate on the creative exploration of the interactions, environments, situations, problems and limitations encountered in everyday life, which were mapped out in scenarios. The purpose of these scenarios was to locate a meaningful time and place for a technological intervention and the interesting questions and issues that are posed. We wanted to identify the research issues and find out how we we conceptualise and explore them. We used the following generative techniques to conceptualise and explore the scenarios: We explored selected scenarios and ‘a day in the life of’ using role-play and photographed them. Ideas and concepts can be tested quickly using this method. We observed how members from the group reacted to scenarios, how they behaved, their intuitive actions, as well as how they felt. We arranged the photos into a time line. We annotated the photos with key moments of interaction to elaborate the scenario into a storyboard. We looked at the scenario from a close-up (personal, emotional) level, medium range shot (supporting people and actions), outside the image (implications, what’s going on around?), establishing shot (larger context, before and after, social/cultural implications). We then went onto consider the role of the garments, looking at how the garments worn in the scenarios might behave; whether the garments could be enhanced to change, extend, and facilitate the interactions; and whether they would ‘behave’ on command instinctively, or be triggered to react, and what would be the trigger. ‘Visualisation’ and embodiment of ideas | We elaborated the stories through making. We used visualisation techniques to tell a story, which we would present to a user group in the final workshop, Observe. Initial ideas discussed were sketched by animation students in order to promote a shared understanding amongst the cluster group. These sketches were used as a basis for mocking-up garment prototypes for the final workshop. The scenarios were then ‘role-played’ by actors as a way of concretising the stories, which were filmed and photographed. A Vicon motion-capture suite was used to isolate gestures and postures involved in acting-out the scenarios. Working with the actors was especially helpful as they were able to input their experience, natural reactions and gestures. The principle of the system is that the motion-capture stick people can be re-clothed with entirely different garments and body appearances. This would be a powerful way of visualising the scenarios in quite a complete form, because it would be possible to create ‘futuristic’ garments in the computer animation in a way that was reasonably realistic. This technology is readily available, having been developed for fantasy movies and computer games. CoDesign with user groups The Observe workshop at HP Labs was about eliciting feedback from a teen group on the scenarios and stories, which were embodied in garment prototypes and visualisations, and also to test out ideas around how we might design appropriable things. A ‘co-design’ method to elicit people’s dreams and desires, developed by Stijn Ossevoort (ETHZurich), was used as a means to facilitate this workshop. We got participants to generate stories by expressing the relationships they have with their clothing, e.g., favourite outfit, the kind of outfit they would wear for a particular occasion, and then to give that outfit a persona, and how that persona would behave in a given situation. Collages were created from images, text and colour. These stories provide inspiration for products, not solutions. Theme or mood boards are a generative fashion design method that use multi-media visual information to build-up a story, image or mood as inspiration for design development. These fashion storyboards often include fabric swatches, sketches, garment details, colour palette, as well as images or photographs to help the viewer ‘read’ the board. Participants were asked to develop theme boards that told personal stories by mobilising their tacit knowledge, and the individual’s own experiences. The theme boards comprise tear sheets from magazines, images and notation that are figurative and abstract representations of their personal experiences developed into stories, personal narratives, etc. The facilitator worked with participants to build a visual and/or textual story during the workshop. Such techniques may help to identify beliefs and personal experiences among age groups that may not respond well to the more conservative questionnaires and interviews often used in research. ‘Quick + Dirty’ prototypes In a simple user study we used the prototype mock-ups as to demonstrate input and output mechanisms and the technology to the user study subjects, to give them an idea of what these products might look and feel like. www.emotionalwardrobe.comhttp://www.emotionalwardrobe.comshapeimage_1_link_0
DesignProbes
 
 
Showing history of places, of past places, encounters, ideas Wouldn’t if be nice if…. _Echoes of city history ripple across my sleeve _My garment helped me to reflect on why I chose it _My garment revealed what I value or think matters _Collected experience like memory _Your garment picked up and kept ‘pictures’ of the everyday _Memento sensory as aesthetics _Garment as a blog, and share blogs Sub-culture Wouldn’t if be nice if…. _My garments told me about a sub-culture I don’t understand _My garments gave me a sense of belonging _We could discover subcultures and their nuggets, and share them _Re. conscience - if sub-cultures could be defined by emotions _We explored/developed a new one Appropriation of given designs, images, logos, messages, symbols Wouldn’t it be nice if… _I could steal and mutate corporate, Logos- to display on me _Could ‘play’ with your garment, move around aesthetics _I could change what a garment (I think) says _We could download patterns / Colours to clothing _Garments had variable dynamics to ‘dance’ with us _We had computing systems, which are as expressive as clothing _Read images could be taken straight out of the brain _New forms of communication