Staff

With emerging research and development with soft circuit technologies and its
integration into textile and clothing design, the garment as a reactive interface opens
up new possibilities in engendering self-expressions, sensory experiences and more.
This 7-weeks class is to introduce students to this realm by creating connections
between hardware engineering and textile crafting. The class is for students with basic
physical computing knowledge to explore the possibility of wearables, and arouse
discussion about the potential in re-imagining our relationship with textiles and
garment design as an interactive media.
What will students do?
The class will contain the process of wearable design and prototyping. We will look at
the history of textiles and fashion, and discuss how they and technology influenced
each other. The topics we will discuss in class will include self-expression, sensory
experience, communications, identities and social justice. We will explore a variety of
wearables and e-textile technologies, including but not limited to: conductive textile
crafting, on-body sensors, actuators, modular circuitry, wireless communications, and
manufacturing. Students will get hands-on experience of designing and prototyping
wearable projects individually or in groups. Weekly projects would vary from e-textile
swatches to interactive garments.
How will the course be structured?
Each class will be a hybrid of lectures, in-class discussions and hands-on workshops.
For each class, the instructor will bring up different topics, share existing projects and
research, or invite guest speakers from fashion technology industry, to talk about the
different aspects of current fashion technology, e-textiles, and wearables field. During
the workshops, students will take design exercises to practice user experience design
methodology for wearables, and also learn different techniques of textile crafting, soft
circuitry, and physical computing. S