A co-design toolkit for wearable E-textiles

Abstract

Individuals with mobility disabilities face physical and social barriers due to a lack of accessible clothing. E-textiles garments and smart clothing could help make garments more accessible by incorporating assistive technologies directly into clothing, but there are limited methods for co-designing prototypes so that users can be involved in the design process. This is due to the specialized knowledge needed for designing smart clothing (garment construction, e-textiles, computing). To help with these issues I am developing a co-design toolkit for wearable e-textiles called Wearable Bits. Wearable Bits expands upon the swatchbook tradition in e-textiles by making swatches that can connect to form any wearable garment. This document covers the proposed studies I will be doing to evaluate the co-design toolkit and the expected contributions of this thesis project.