Psychophysical Elements of Wearability

Looking for references on the relationship between specific mechanisms of the body and wearable computing, I never accross anything relevant to my research. During Chi 2007, I discovered the work of Lucy Dunne: Psychophysical Elements of Wearability. She has a large number of publications on the subject and her research is fascinating.

My primary research focus is wearable technology design, a new field that is only recently beginning to gain direction and depth. As a functional apparel designer, I approach wearable technology with the goal of expanding garment functionality through use of technology. One of the most useful and salient applications of technology to garment functionality is in the area of body sensing: knowledge of the physical, emotional, and situational state of the user is essential to many next-generation computing applications, particularly in the areas of ubiquitous computing and adaptive information delivery, as well as the more direct areas of medical and sports monitoring. However, while many sensing technologies are predominantly well-established and reliable, they have also emerged from an engineering tradition that rarely includes the geometric, dynamic, cognitive, and emotional unpredictability that is the human body.

One of the most significant themes in my work has been the importance of designing truly wearable technology: defining the elements that influence wearability and overcoming the technical challenges of gathering data in a comfortable and unobtrusive manner. Most of my recent work has been applied to deducing the position and movement of the human body by detecting forces and bends in worn garments, with a wearability focus on moving sensing technology out of the electronically reliable but often awkward and uncomfortable medical standard and re-designing it to function adequately in “normal” clothing.

My doctoral dissertation, Wearable Sensing of Body Position and Movement Through Body-Garment Interactions, establishes the psychophysical elements that comprise “wearability” of technology and argues that in wearable technology, the influence of wearability extends to the user’s physical functionality, cognitive processing, and acceptance of innovation in worn artefacts. The design considerations that are established in the theoretical portion of the work are then applied to the problem of sensing the movement and position of the human body by detecting the shape and dynamics of worn garments, rather than by sensing (unwearably) the body itself. - Lucy Dunne

Shadow monsters

I saw the shadow monsters at the RCA in 2005 and loved them. The creator Philip Worthington has a lot of other neat projects on site. I just refer to this specific work as a reference in motion and interaction design.

Singing Sock Puppets

Singing Sock Puppets by Matthew Brown

This is a MIDI controller sock puppet. Opening and closing the mouth bends a flex sensor and makes the puppet 'sing' up and down a scale. He can be tuned to sing in any scale - blues, pentatonic, chromatic and so on. These puppets could be used to help illustrate relatively complex musical theory - such as the differences between blues, chromatic and pentatonic scales - through play; this type of musical terminology doesn't normally enter the school music curriculum until GCSE level in the UK (ages 15 - 16).

Motion mapping

Enlighted by Marc Downie's work at the MIT Media Lab, I just checked his company Openended Group where he co-creates digital artworks for stage, screen, gallery, museum and public spaces.
His PhD thesis (459 pages) on choreographing the extended agent is available for download online.

I selected this quote that I find particularly interesting regarding my current research ...

If you cast your mind back to childhood, you will soon discover our topic – motion-mapping – most clearly and imaginatively revealed. There in the games and pursuits of your earliest years you can distinguish this phenomenon in its three most basic forms. You can also follow each form forward in time to find out what they grew into -- forms of art.

You might start by bringing back the movement games you played so ardently as a child – in particular the games of imitation and mimicry, like Copycat, Follow the leader, Charades, Simon Says, and the innumerable variants you and your friends would improvise. These games had you map the movements of others onto your own body, sometimes in the simplest one-to-one transformations (as when you followed the leader), but sometimes more intricately, as when you mimicked a lion, or a horse, or a gladiator...

Design thinking: exhibition by Ideo

The Divisumma 18 Calculator by Olivetti and designed by Mario Bellini, 1973.

An exhibition I cannot miss ...
IDEO Selects: Works from the Permanent Collection On view June 22, 2007–January 20, 2008 at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

IDEO, a leading innovation and design firm for more than 20 years, is the fourth guest curator in the exhibition series presented in the Nancy and Edwin Marks Gallery. IDEO organizes works from the permanent collection around the theme of "design thinking," displaying objects such as an array of flashlights from the 1940s-1990s, showing diverse designs for portable lighting; a 19th-century textile panel with instructions for making hand shadow figures; a cane with pull-out map; the 1940s “Silver Streak” glass iron; the "Divisumma 18" calculator, designed by Mario Bellini; and a child's chair, designed by Charles and Ray Eames.

Informational diagrams

Another master piece in the domaine of graphic representation of information. Best informational diagrams edited by Pie Books

Graphs, charts, maps, schematics… a collection of the latest in graphics that visualize complex information thus making it easy to comprehend. This wide range of diagram masterpieces from around the world documents the state of the art.

Shell

[The other's eyes] turn to me a liquid pool waiting for unforseeable disturbances. They are more naked than the flesh without pelt or hide, without clothing. ... They are more naked than things can be, than walls bared of their adornments and revolvers stripped of their camouflage; they bare a substance susceptible and vulnerable. Their nudity exposes them to whatever message I may want to impose, whatever offense I can contrive - Alphonso Lingis, Foreign Bodies, p171.

In shell, I tailored a plastic envelop of a human body, envelop that is then discarded. The plastic fabric is carved with textural information. Its transparence resembles a ghost, its undefined junctions and closed top suggest a metamorphosis rather than a piece of clothing. It is an object that has been depersonalized by being discarded in public.

Attached to a long stick, it floats in the wind, linking the experience of the playground (yard), the uncomfortable cocoon (the shell) and academic knowledge (the Widener library at Harvard University).

Social subjectivity?

Should we design for everybody within a consensus or should we find a new line of products outside of the consensus? Should we go for the consensus and define what this consensus is or should we rethink the interaction with products itself? When researching on interaction design and defining visionnary work, I found the following quote to be inspiring:

Is it really so sad and dangerous to be fed up with seeing with your eyes, breathing with your lungs, swallowing with your mouth, talking with your tongue, thinking with your brain, having an anus and larynx, head and legs? Why not walk with your head, sing with your sinuses, see through your skin, breathe with your belly.
Where psychoanalysis says, "Stop, find your self again," we should say instead, "Let's go further still ... we haven't sufficiently dismantled our self." Substitute forgetting for anamnesis, experimentation for interpretation. Find your body without organs. Find out how to make it. It's a question of life and death, youth and old age, sadness and joy. It is where everything is played out. (150-151) - Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Mille Plateaux: Capitalisme et schizophrénie, 1980.

Visual Communication bible

The bible in visual communication Grid Systems in Graphic Design by Josef Müller-Brockmann.

A Visual Communication Manual for graphic designers, typographers and three dimensional designers. Considered by most to be the definitive book on grid systems. This book is a must for any designer. From concept to instructional, this book covers typography through grid systems used in design both 2D and 3D.

Richard Saul Wurman

American demographics

Richard Saul Wurman is a classic reference in information design recommended to me by Mirja Leinss.
He created the online content understanding USA, a celebration and a visual demonstration of questions and answers leading to understanding.


Information Anxiety

He also created a comprehensive online content on understanding healthcare.


A human dashboard