Smart Textile Techniques

Smart textiles are one of the many words used to describe fabrics with electronics embedded into their structure. These electronics sense information, like physiological signals or pressure, and actuate by changing color or shape. These textiles have applications from fashion to medicine, and we are deeply interested in how we can learn from and adapt the very long history of textile production in craft to improve the functionality and aesthetic range offered by these technologies. We offer these techniques to the public in the form of publications and open-source materials. 

 Unstable Design Lab    Unstable Design Lab Website     Unstable Design Lab GitHub

Publications

• Laura Devendorf, Katya Arquilla, Sandra Wirtanen, Allison Anderson, and Steven Frost. 2020. Craftspeople as Technical Collaborators: Lessons Learned through an Experimental Weaving Residency. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–13. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376820 (Honolulu, Hawaii (virtual)–April 25-30, 2020) [Honorable Mention Award].
• Mikhaila Friske, Shanel Wu and Laura Devendorf. 2019. AdaCAD: Crafting Software For Smart Textiles Design. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '19). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Paper 345, 13 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300575 (Glagow, UK – May 4-9, 2019). [Best Paper Honorable Mention].
• Laura Devendorf and Chad Di Lauro. 2019. Adapting Double Weaving and Yarn Plying Techniques for Smart Textiles Applications. In Proceedings of the Thirteenth Conference on Tangible and Embodied/Embedded Interaction (TEI ’19), p. 77-85. (Tempe, Arizona—March 17-20, 2019).
• Josephine Klefeker and Laura Devendorf. 2018. String Figuring: A Story of Reflection, Material Inquiry, and a Novel Sensor. In Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA. '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Paper LBW086, 6 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3170427.3188570 (Montreal, Canada–April 21-26, 2018).