Smart textiles integrate sensing and actuation components into their structures to bring interactivity to fabrics. We describe how we adapted two existing fiber arts techniques, double weaving and yarn plying, for the purpose of creating a woven textile that changes color in response to touch. We draw from this experience to make three core contributions: descriptions of our experiments plying yarns that change between three color states; descriptions of double weaving structures that allow us to support interactivity while hiding circuitry from view; and suggestions for how these techniques could be adapted and extended by other researchers to make richly crafted and technologically sophisticated fabrics.
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AdaCAD: Crafting Software For Smart Textiles Design
Woven smart textiles are useful in creating flexible electronics because they integrate circuitry into the structure of the fabric itself. However, there do not yet exist tools that support the specific needs of smart textiles weavers. This paper describes the process and development of AdaCAD, an application for composing smart textile weave drafts. By augmenting traditional weaving drafts, AdaCAD allows weavers to design woven structures and circuitry in tandem and offers specific support for common smart textiles techniques. We describe these techniques, how our tool supports them alongside feedback from smart textiles weavers. We conclude with a reflection on smart textiles practice more broadly and suggest that the metaphor of coproduction can be fruitful in creating effective tools and envisioning future applications in this space.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1755587
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10094652
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- CHI '19 Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- Paper No. 345
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300575
