Wearable Bits: Scaffolding Creativity with a Prototyping Toolkit for Wearable E textiles
Smart garment and wearable e textile prototypes are difficult to co design because of the variety of expertise needed (garment design, sewing skills, hardware prototyping, and software programming) To help with this, we developed a toolkit for prototyping wearable e textiles, named Wearable Bits, which enables co design with non expert users without demanding sewing, hardware or software skills. We developed a low fidelity and medium fidelity experience prototype of the toolkit and ran a series of workshops where non expert users designed their own e textile wearables using Wearable Bits. In this paper, we discuss the ideas they developed, their construction techniques, the roles individuals took on while building, and suggestions for future toolkits.
Tangible and Embedded Interaction