The ship of Thesis
Documentation of the final project of the Masters in Interaction Design
1) I want my Final Project to
Showcase my curiosity for the future and ability to understand creative challenges through a process fueled by insights and ideas. I want to use my knowledge in Fashion, Design Thinking to create an interactive solution that is functional, inspiring and initiates an awareness of preparing for the future.
I would like my final project to build upon, challenge and display my experience in Fashion, Journalism and data visualisation coupled with Human Centred Design, rapid prototyping and Design Thinking.
2) I’m interested in/inspired by…
When I was 19 in our fashion styling class, we were asked to re-design a plain white tee with one condition : Choose a Designer and get inspired by their aesthetics.
I chose Hussein Chalayan.
And later found out that Lady Gaga was inspired by his work too. He was one of the first designers who fused technology and fashion to create interesting ensembles. And this inspired me to style my plain white tee, the Chalayan way (and later, drew me towards fashion technology).
Here’s what I created:
I am inspired by the future of fashion. Would we have the same materials in the future? What kind of technology would help us in fashion of the future? Most importantly, what would our clothes be doing apart from protecting us? A step further takes me to question the importance of fashion in our lives. I believe that Fashion would aid the world of technology to make it acceptable, adaptable and interesting.
I’m interested in the Quantified Self. And I believe fashion will play a great role in understanding our bodies to help us pursue a healthy and conscious living.
3) This project is relevant because…
It is predicted that in 2050, earth would be home to more than 9 billion people. We are evolving constantly and our products are transforming too. The needs of a human body would increase from basic protection from the environment to analysing data of the body or perform actions that would otherwise be difficult or time-consuming. We would be living in the age of quantified data and our body would be one of the essential sources of gathering our data. In the future, we would be increasingly curious about our body, health and would be willing to use technology on the body to gather this information and help us live better.
But along with the needs of a human body growing, we would be prone to a lot of issues, health and environmental related. Our lifestyles do not necessarily support our health, we have engaged in a lot of activities that have adverse effects on our body. The source of information in the future would be our human body and I’m in search of new ways to use technology to help us with a healthy living.
From my point of view, it is relevant for my final project because I see myself adapting technology to pursue a healthy lifestyle, especially after moving to Switzerland.
I have learnt that technology can consciously help us make better decisions with our health, physically and emotionally.
This coupled with my love for creating interactive stories, digital or physical in the future I aim to mix technology and best practises of the past to derive creative solutions to problems.
4) During my Final Project I would like to challenge myself in…
My starting point:
- Understanding the current trend in wearable technology and interactive fashion. What are the wearables in the market catering to? What are the specific needs of a person today with regards to their body?
- What are the areas that fashion could team with technology and cater to a specific issue today?
- Skills in Rhino, exploring sensors, Arduino and prototyping.
In the first week of brainstorming, I went back to the Human Centered Design Kit by IDEO.org and +Acumen. In Late February,March and April Kim and I teamed up to the Design Kit challenge and worked to create a solution for engaging the youth in pursuing social entrepreneurship as a viable career option. I have tons of stories about this challenge which I will save for another post but the important take away from this workshop was the process. I am now refering to the workbooks and activities we followed in the design kit workshop.
The inspiration phase is my favorite. It allows me to explore so many ideas that I wouldn’t have thought of. The process begins with Framing Your Challenge. How do I frame my challenge when I don’t know what I want to solve?
So I went hunting for inspiration. I hunted. For ideas. Literally. (Haha)
I watched the documentary : The Next Black again. I watched it first in September to understand the latest developments in Fashion. It’s a film about some of the people shaping the future of fashion. It features the work of Studio XO, Adidas, Patagonia, Bio Couture ltd. and Sophie Mather (Innovation Director of the Yeh Group.)
Each of these have very valuable lessons.
“..There has been a rapid breakthrough of products grouped under the term ‘Wearable Tech’. Most of today’s solutions are limited to Head and Wrist. Behind the scenes however, the race is on to integrate Technology with mainstream clothing.”
—The part of Matt Hymers, Adidas — Smart Clothes.
“Integrating Movement Sensors and accelerometers into fabric which are very very small and non-invasive and..for us working in elite sports that’s really the key, it has to be something that the athlete cannot feel and it doesn’t interfere with what they are doing” — Matt.
Matt demonstrates the system of woven sensors in the shirt that send real-time data of the players’ performance. Something else that he said stayed with me…
“I think sooner rather than later, you’re gonna see more and more sensors and more and more clothes and not just in sports, in everyday life as well. I think people want to understand more about what they are going through and how they can improve on how they live. So I think we starting this at an elite level and, a level at which people are getting paid a lot of money to perform, but at the end of the day we are just measuring things so, it’s all about how you use the data and how you present it.”
This takes me back to the Quantified Self classes in Data Visualisation with Fabio. I believe that all of our quests are based on information, which is data and tracking it constantly to improve our decisions and lives significantly.
Something else that inspired me, were words of Suzanne Lee from Biocouture ltd. The first time I watched this documentary, I was inspired by her work. It struck me deeply, I could understand the need to create the future clothes with the help of biology. In fact, growing up with Parents who studied Agriculture, I am deeply rooted to organic, biological solutions to various problems. Also accounts to having friends who are in various fields of science and research, you are bound to discover various perspectives towards global challenges and it helps you think broadly.
She uses green tea, sugar, ascetic acid like vinegar, starter culture that’s yeast and bacteria.
“The future will be about designing the bacteria to spin the thread, to give it the qualities that we want, so if we want it to repel water, we design that into the cell, if we want it to deliver some kind of nutritious quality to your skin perhaps, that could be designed into the material.”
— Suzanne Lee, Biocouture Ltd.
So here’s what I did. I picked Fashion and started brainstorming on things I would like to believe would be the future of fashion. This was a method to make the process fun because brainstorming alone is really, really tough. I realised the importance of having a group or at least another person, when I wasn’t able to bounce ideas, build on other’s ideas or having someone build mine and basically engage in a discussion that could spark more ideas. This is really important to gather inspiration, however, I tried to have as much fun as possible.
I began to find inspiration in conversations with friends, asking them what they think about Fashion and the future. How would they imagine it? Would they use it for something specifically? In India, I would hangout with my friends on a terrace, brainstorming on such topics. It would help me imagine the wildest ideas and help me build stories around them. Luckily, a casual skype call turned into a brainstorming session, leading to many more crazy ideas (one of them even includes a predition of Handkerchiefs/tissues turning edible, haha).
A couple of sessions later, I sorted the ideas and realised that Fashion doesn’t really have the conventional sense of oomph, style or elite assumptions in my brainstorming. So where was this taking me?
Some of the things I had in a good number than the rest were on these topics were along these ideas:
Which eventually led to a lot of other questions and Ideas, inspiration from existing projects…
Health seems to be the dominating area of interest for wearables. But how was it really helping? Before I got to dig up on that, I sat down to frame my design challenge. I had a bunch of ideas and thankfully, I managed to cluster them into groups and I arrived at a point that felt like my first aha moment.
If health was the main idea, what exactly would I want to measure in the future? I believe in the quantified self movement. But one important aspect of health technology is that, if it is not something a mobile phone can help with, it’s probably going to have a special reason to exist. So I listed down some things I would like to measure in the future, money, energy, mood managing, health and specific dietary requirements…etc.,and turns out there are various products for pretty much everything if not directly, indirectly…except, encouraging women to take control of their health specifically with a thyroid problem. The thyroid gland is an important one but rarely do we worry about it like the heart or the brain. The thyroid gland produces hormones that control the body’s metabolism and are vital for regulating heart rate and temperature. An underactive thyroid can cause exhaustion, depression and weight gain. If the gland is overactive, it can cause weight loss and a rapid heartbeat. Women are 10 times more likely to have thyroid problems than men.
So I would like to design something for women to understand the importance of the thyroid’s health and take control over their lifestyle and diet to prevent a deficiency. Framing the Design Challenge would be tough around this, but right now I am keen on learning more about thyroid disorders and how it affects the life of a woman after being diagnosed with an issue.
Inspiration Study courtesy: andreasrefsgaard.com
