Presentation on the development of SMART garment systems for healthcare and fashion/apparel, and proposals for new methods of user engagement to enhance project development.
21. H E L P C O U T U R E ™: SM A R T G A R M E N T S A S E N A B L I N G T E C H N O L O G I E S H E L P C O U T U R E ™: SM A R T G A R M E N T S A S E N A B L I N G T E C H N O L O G I E S
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33. Sources
Bibliography
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Rogers, Yvonne. "Icons at the Interface: Their Usefulness." Interacting
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Smart Garments and electronic textiles
The marriage between clothing and electronic technology is not always a seamless junction. Such projects often involve the blending of four distinct disciplines: textiles, clothing design, electronics, and information systems.
Apparel Evolution
Apparel, or the ability to clothe oneself with garments, has long been associated with the technological advancements of mankind.
From primitive garments designed to protect against the elements, to being an integral part of the industrial revolution, apparel and the ways in which people adorn themselves has come to signify a critical component in both cultural evolution and personal identity.
The next revolution in textile and garment design will allow us to integrate both clothing and technology.
But what do we mean when we say Smart Textiles?
Some forms of wearable technology are described as smart clothing, using the qualifier clothing to distinguish garments from other worn accessories, such as bracelets or adhesive patches. Technology described as “smart” has the capability to sense something and respond appropriately without being directly controlled by a human.
Colloquially the term smart is often interchangeably used with high-tech.
However, One of the most evident differences between the fields of apparel and electronic systems is in the physical properties:
Apparel prioritizes the physical comfort of the wearer through fabrics and garments, often-emphasizing softness, breathability, and conforming to the body. While Electronic systems traditionally prioritize stabilizing rigidity, impermeability, and flat surfaces.
6. SMART TEXTILES: Definitions and Applications
E-textile materials generally fall into one of two categories: materials that act as conductors, connecting parts of a circuit, or materials that actually contain components of a circuit such as power sources, sensors, processors, or actuators. Generally speaking, there are four major factors or methodologies from which to develop a “smart garment” or apparel that incorporates “smart textiles.”
1st: Embedded Circuits- Cute Circuit (LED light displays)
Wearable computing : Electronically activated smart materials, can be “turned-on” either by the flip of a switch or through a more complex system of sensors, circuits, and programmed responses.
In this example by the company Cute Circuit, LED light sensors have been incorporated into garments as visual displays.
2nd: Conductive Fibers - Graphene: washable wire mesh. In smart clothing, components of a circuit many need to be distributed over the surface of the body but powered by a central power source. While conductive fibers often have a narrower set of capabilities than electrically activated smart materials, they may have the advantage of not needing a power source, electronics or wiring.
3rd: Strategic Sensors- Heddoko athletic wear
Responsive or “smart” garments may also contain embedded sensors,that change in some way when activated by a human or in response to a change in the environment. These are often need to be place strategically near the part of the body which they are monitoring, in order to effectively capture data or information about what the body is doing.
Lastly: In order to be considered smart, they must operate as Communication Devices- whereby monitoring and feedback are constants within the technology
There are a variety of purposes where smart clothing is currently being utilized from biomedical and social applications under development in the area of wearable technology.
•Military, •Health/Wellnes, •Medical, •Infotainment
For example, the military currently uses embedded garment sensors for geopositioning, remote monitoring, and for ensuring wellness metrics for soldiers in the field.
In the area of Health & Wellness, many companies, such as Under Armor & Nike, are incorporating activity monitors to help athletes improve performance training.
With regards to the medical field, biomedical devices, such as glucose monitors and blood pressure trackers, help physicians keep tabs on a variety of vital signs.
And in the area of infotainment, smart garments are enabling fashion-day individuals with new ways of communicating status, through the incorporation of light-sensitive conductive inks to circuit controlled LED lights.
Electricity is the medium through which information flows in a smart garment system. Changes in the flow of electrical energy through sensors are used to deduce information about the wearer or the environment. It is commonly believed that the ability to sense changes in the environment and respond to those changes is what makes a material “smart”.
Sensors transform one type of energy (the stimulus) into another type of energy (the response). They respond to s stimulus by changing the way that they conduct electricity. That change in flow of electricity must them be interpreted by a circuit, which can decide to create a response by using electricity to activate yet another material, called the actuator.
Clothing can be an effective platform for communicating information to the wearer because it is easy for actuators in clothing to be placed close to many different sensory receptors and for the user to quickly and easily access interfaces. Information processing and delivery devices can become more seamless extensions of the wearer’s body and brain when they are in wearable form.
While apparel prioritizes the physical comfort of fabrics and garments, through cut, contour, fit, softness, and breathability, electronic systems prioritize stabilizing and protecting the device, often emphasizing rigidity, impermeability, and flat surfaces. While some forms of wearable technology can be condensed into a single unit and located in a comfortable accessory such as an armband or belt using the manufacturing techniques common to electronic devices, body sensors often need to be stabilized.
Measuring vital signs
For most people, the term body sensing involves an image of measuring vital signs, the kind of sensing that is commonly performed during a medical check up. Vital signs are some of the most important pieces of information about the current state of the individual body (hence the term vital signs). The most common vital signs are Heart rate, Blood pressure, Body temperature, Respiration, and each is measured in a variety of different ways, which present different requirements for wearable devices.
In addition to sensing information from the wearer’s body, a wearable system can also gather information from the environment around the wearer. Physical factors include variables such as temperature, light level, sound level, location, or distance. These factors can be used to monitor medical conditions, detect context, and even deduce emotions.
In a similar way, information movement and position of the body can be used to monitor symptoms of a developing condition, as well as provide more detailed information about movements and activities.
Together vital signs and body movements provide a very detailed picture of the physical state and activity of the individual.
The following slide illustrates and example of a smart device developed as an insulin monitor, under the label Hanky Pancreas.
Smart garments differ from traditional mobil technologies, in that they allow the wearer more freedom. For example, to use a device carried in pocket (such as a mobile phone), the user must locate and retrieve it, activate it, navigate to the right application, and ask for information. By contrast, a wearable device can sense that need for information and display it peripherally in a manner that is both accessible and non-intrusive.
Further, WT can access information about the wearer that is difficult for mobile technology to achieve.
Example: A wearable heart-monitor can gather continuous information about the heart over a long period of time. This may make it possible for a doctor in a city to monitor a patient in a remote or rural area, or allow a patient to be monitored from home following a surgery.Applications
One of the most interesting functions that technology brings to clothing is the ability to continually access information and communicate with other people at a distance. Mobile technologies have the ability to provide just in time, instantaneous access to information. Wear ability is sometimes seen as the next frontier in mobile technologies because it allows access to information to be even more seamless.
SMART GARMENT COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS
Pervasive monitoring and multi-format communication tools.
• Aiding in the monitoring of fluctuations during cycles of illness.
• Allows for patient to become more aware of their own physiological changes, as well as respond to shifts in health due to context or circumstances.
• Connecting patients with their wider caregiver network.
Seamless Integration of Display or Wearable Communication
Smart garments allows for new forms of communication and display, such as tactile perception, to open doors for more seamless integration of wearable technology into people’s lives.
Basics of Tactile Perception
Most of the body’s sense of touch takes place through the skin. The skin senses a wide variety of tactile impulses through specialized mechanoreceptors, which translate mechanical stimuli into electrical signals carried by the nerves to the brain. The sensory organs in the skin detect a variety of forms of tactile impulse (stroking, pressure, vibration, and others) as well as temperature, itch, and pain.
Touch, pressure, and pain are also perceived in the muscles and organs, but this information is used more to sense the position and movement of the body, or to sense pain.
Vigour — A Gorgeous Wearable For Rehabilitation and Physical Therapy
In this example Designed by Pauline van Dongen, we see incorporation of tactile perception as a primary mode of communication.
Vigour is a beautifully knitted cardigan with knit stretch sensors that continually monitors the wearer’s movement, and send signals back to the user through gentle vibration, to stimulate movemement.
In addition, The data connects to a mobile app that can be used by patients, therapists and caretakers to monitor and watch the rehabilitation process.
Adaptive Phase Change Materials
Actuator components in a smart garment or textile can also make a physical change: they can transform electricity into a specific response such as light, heat, or movement.
These can also respond to changes in body, and adjust as programmed in a variety of ways.
In this example by the Japanese apparel company Uniqlo, we see their Heattech fiber, which warms the body in respose to perspiration rates. Other examples allow conductive ink to change patterns or motifs for their wearer, responding to light or sound stimulus.
LEDS
A light-emitting diode (LED) is an actuator that transforms electrical energy into light energy. LEDs are made up of a specific kind of semiconducting material that causes electrons to drop from a higher energy level to a lower energy level as they move from one kind of conducting material to another. As the electrons fall to a lower energy level, they release the excess energy in the form of light.
Lightwear: therapeutic tech brightens user enthusiasm
Confronting Winter Dreariness
Current research indicates that blue light works best for people affected by SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). This is great news for people with SAD because the blue light boxes are only 2-4% as bright as their full spectrum counterparts.
In her designs, Halley only used lights that emit at this end of the spectrum. Because the blue light is not as bright, users aren’t blinded as they usually are with full-spectrum light therapy. She wanted to allow users to move around, get ready for work, and go about their day without being encumbered by the inconvenience of sitting still for an hour in front of a blinding light.
A garment can be an ideal place to embed a health monitoring sensor system, because of its innate intimacy with the user given its place in their social construction of identity. Because clothing is constantly present and held close to the physical body, it is useful platform for sensing and monitoring the movements, activities, and context of the human body.
Integrating sensing technology into clothing opens a window into the needs and objectives of the human inside, as well as the surrounding context and environment in which humans find themselves.
“Design is devising a course of action aimed at changing an existing situation into a preferred one.”
Herbert Simon, the Sciences of the Artificial, 1996