1. technology and computing

Wearable Technologies
By Ben Peleg
April 22nd, 2015
Integrated Seminar 2 – Eric Dean Wilson
What do we expect future fashion to look like? Since the
jolly sixties, the future of fashion was imagined as clean avantgarde silhouettes, made of new and exciting materials such as
plastic, PVC, Spandex and vinyl that were rarely in use until then.
In 1964, inspired by latest achievements in the field of space
travel, Pierre Cardin prepared the ground for fashion futurism by
presenting the first Space-Age collection, incorporated with
synthetic materials, geometric shapes and space-themed elements
Figure 1 - Raquel Welch modeling
Space Age for Pierre Cardin
such as the astronaut helmet. The trend inspired many world renowned designers such as Paco
Rabanne and André Courrèges to design similar collections all through the sixties and seventies.
But by the beginning of the nineties the definition of future and progress changed almost entirely.
The Internet as well as the personal computer created a shift in the perception of modern
visionaries, and the technological edge penetrated public conversation and the workrooms of
fashion designers.
In a 1992 article published in World Future Society magazine,
a peripheral voice made a wild guess about the possible future of
fashion: “An ambulance arrives. An emergency medic quickly checks
the driver's vital signs and injuries with a hand-held ‘track ball’
containing special sensors and a video camera. The vital signs are
displayed in the medic's goggles, and the information is transmitted
to the hospital. Meanwhile, the medic dictates comments on the
Figure 2 - Heated Socks (1963).
Saks Fifth Avenue fashion
publicity collection
driver's condition into a microphone attached to the medic's goggles;
the data are matched against a medical encyclopedia on CD-ROM for
possible diagnosis and treatment.” According to the rest of this article, the anonymous writer
anticipated his vision to be realized by 2005. Ten years after the due date of the vision, we can
only appreciate (and be a bit amused) by this wishful dream and how closely it came to the current
perspective of how designers see wearable technologies.
Peripheral voices as such became louder towards the mid-nineties, and this long-existing
though just newly recognized movement has slowly entered our lives and awareness. Apart from
the academic pursuit after realizing the myriad possibilities of wearable technologies, a growing
amount of companies and services started offering us products of portable technology. Today, we
are exposed to an unprecedented abundance of products, such as Google Glass or Digital Bespoke
(a 3D body scan that allows a tailor to produce a true perfectly fit suit). These products do not
necessarily possess avant-garde qualities, but they do offer us an innovative and perceptual
breakthrough in body-garment relations.
Wearable technology can be defined as the incorporation of technology in either the
creation process of a wearable object, for example 3D printing or laser cutting, or in the final
product itself, like the Apple watch. Wearable technologies can come in the form of smart textiles,
accessories, sophisticated gadgets or general appendixes to garments in order to serve as medical
equipment, sportswear, and professional equipment, or to replace and enhance everyday life
functions. The market of Wearable technologies is already being highly embraced by consumers,
and in a fast-growing pace, as can be seen in a market analysis that was published in PR Newswire.
According to their 2013 analysis, the market share was worth $2.7 billion in 2012 and is expected
to reach as much as $8.3 billion by 2018.
For the sake of our examination, I chose to focus on the personal daily function of wearable
technologies, because truly, there is something lacking from today’s mass-productive fashion
industry. Most well-based fashion companies stopped challenging social norms or boundaries of
the body (with the exception of the separatist couture show). A slight feeling of déjà vu becomes
more evident from year to year, as garments are barely reconsidered and are inspired by some trend
from twenty years ago or merely last year’s one. Fashion designers forgot that design is all about
solving problems in our society’s fast-changing lifestyle, not just juggling with colors and patterns
in order to increase consumption. Or maybe this distinction is very well considered, but that is an
entirely different story.
What do we, as users, expect of such revolutionary technology? In his article from 1999,
“Fashion Meets Function in Wearable Computing”, Brian Albright explores the newly emerging
field of wearable technologies (then referred to as “Wearable Computing”), while also laying out
the user-side demands for such market, if it ever to succeed. Quite prophetically, he manages to
portray the future characteristics of wearable technologies in years to come.
Out of all his assumptions and visions, one stands out as truly revolutionary, and offers a
unique way to reconsider the relations between portable technology and its user. “Wearables go a
step farther by breaking from the desktop paradigm and turning computing into a hands-free
proposition. The goal is to let users take the technology wherever they need it but free their hands
to perform other tasks--in other words, to merge the user's information space with his or her work
space.” And indeed, the next big thing for the more progressive fashion and technology firms was
being able to break the desktop paradigm, meaning, release us from the bounding necessity of
actively operating new technologies and remain free.
Skeptics might claim that ditching the desktop and incorporating its functions into a
garment is one step too far. That solutions that are not as binding to the body will work better,
mentioning after-handedly the fact that we are already too enslaved to technology. But in fact, it
is exactly this blinking 2”x4” screen, with the highly unnatural attention it draws from us, that
causes us the real problem. We collapsed every single service and function we might want to use
into one device. And now whenever we want to check the weather, for example, we simultaneously
consume the temperature, our email notifications and who happens to have a birthday today,
without ever stopping to think maybe we do not need all this information shoved down our throat
at all times. Maybe we would like to moderate our consumption of information. Even more
radically, maybe we do not need to know the temperature at all, and instead all that we truly need
is a temperature-adjustable shirt or the ability to control its warming effect.
This
idea
might
seem
far-fetched,
unachievable for the common consumer or just
simply crazy. But not only breaking the desktop
paradigm is possible, it is actually a matter of the
past. Juan Hinestroza, director of the Textiles
Nanotechnology
Figure 3 - iPhone Charging Dress (2011). Abbey Liebman for
Juan Hinestroza's Laboratory for Textiles Nanotechnology,
Cornell University
Laboratory
at
Cornell
University, along with his team of researchers,
has already achieved great progress in areas of
mobility and hands-free availability. The close involvement with fabrics in their atomic level
allows Hinestroza’s team to enhance their functionality while still maintaining the natural qualities
of a fabric. For example, by incorporating conductive polymers into cotton, the team has
successfully created a conductive fabric that feels and drapes like cotton. Moreover, one of
Hinestroza’s students sewed a dress out of this cotton, and by attaching solar panels to it,
completely repurposed it as a solar-rechargeable battery. Later, the student connected a phone
charger to one of the pockets and turned the dress into a mobile iPhone charger (Figure 3).
Can you imagine what we can achieve if we make the conceptual leap, which is, quite
frankly, almost negligible, from this application to any other one? This singular application is just
one among many others possible with the heavy guns we carry in our arsenal. For example,
consider what can be achieved with all kinds of data collectors: Voice recognition, visual receptors
(barcode reader, for example) or temperature sensors. Then there is also the wireless angle that
allows us to play with the notion of immediacy and telecommunications. Albright quoted Jackie
Fenn, vice president and research director of advanced technologies at GartnerGroup saying: “You
get not just a synchronized view of the world that was updated three-quarters of an hour earlier,
but real-time information in an environment that's changing.” The options and opportunities are
truly endless. Nowadays, with every electrical component we can possibly think of being
reinvented in nano-size, fabrication is simply a non-issue. So what is holding wearable
technologies from becoming highly widespread?
Anthony Dunne, author of Hertizian Tales, stressed that given the amount of options spread
to them, it is the designers’ turn to take action. “The most difficult challenges for designers of
electronic objects now lie not in technical and semiotic functionality, where optimal levels of
performance are already attainable,” he beautifully sums up all that we discussed up to this point,
“but in the realms of the metaphysics, poetry and aesthetics where little research has been carried
out.” By that he means that it is up to us designers to stop reproducing all that we have already
invented (allow me to mention déjà vu again). Instead, it is our job to look at our surroundings and
deeply examine it in order to answer the question “what do people need?”
In 1992, when wearable technology was no more than a distant notion, Jane. M Lamb and
M. Jo Kallal invented the FEA model, which name stands for its three components: Functional,
Expressive and Aesthetic (Figure 4). This model
suggests a scheme that could help addressing a
consumer’s need during the process of design. The
model is comprehensive, and takes into consideration
matters of fit, mobility and comfort (Functional);
Values, status and self-esteem (Expressive); and art,
design and body-garment relationship (Aesthetic).
However, it comes just short of successfully
constituting an effective model to considering the
Figure 4 - The FEA Model by Jane M. Lamb and M. Jo
Kallal
needs of a wearable technologies user. Jensin E. Wallace, a social researcher of wearable
technology for The University of Cincinnati, explains: “While this model [the FEA model]
addresses the criteria needed to create apparel that incorporates both utilitarian and stylistic
concerns, it does not address how the wearer is to interact with the garment … when technology
is added to a garment, it becomes a part of a larger experience as an assistant to technology in
performing an action.” In direct relation to the solar rechargeable dress, Wallace does have a good
point. The decision to wear a phone-charging dress can hardly be measured in pure terms of fit,
comfort or even mobility. A larger aspect of user-interaction should be taken into consideration,
in a context that includes both relations with the garment and with technology.
Wallace’s model suggests a new way for us to assess the relationship of a user with both
fashion and technology simultaneously (Figure 5). First, the model revolves around an opportunity,
meaning a need wearable technology can address and the variety of solutions to achieve it, rather
than a cultural phenomenon. Second, Wallace’s hierarchal order of different parts is more suitable.
The interface part strives to particularly isolate the
technological
component
and
represent
the
technological development process of the solution.
Then, on top of achieving a natural-to-use interface
and a solid application of the technological innovation,
the user’s lifestyle needs to be considered. What are
the user’s habit and routines? Is the design accessible
and adoptable in the context of the user’s lifestyle?
And how is the user experiencing the interactive aspect
Figure 5 - The Wallace Model by Jansin Wallace of the
University of Cincinnati
of the product? Having figured that out, the designer can finally address matters of identity and
aesthetic in the classic FEA approach – cultural values, social status and body-garment
relationship.
Google Glass is a triumphal example of how Wallace’s model can be applied. It is the most
progressive and examine-worthy product that the market has to offer nowadays, from its unique
shape and position on one’s head to its innovative functionality. The opportunity is definitely there.
Although the head-mounted device was not first invented or assembled by Google, this device is
groundbreaking for it requires no carried appendix like former developments (Thad Starner, MIT
graduate, built in 1997 one of the first ever headmounted devices, which required an on-belt carried
mini-computer and a remote control; figure 6).
Google Glass offers a variety of as much as 50
Android-based apps that can be downloaded through
Figure 6 – Thad Starner wearing his head mounted
device with constant connection to the Internet
the Google website and used with the product.
Operation is implemented almost entirely using voice recognition technologies, leaving the user’s
hands free. I believe we can safely agree that in terms of pure technology (the interface part of the
model) Google created a state-of-the-art piece.
In a review published in Techradar.com, Matt Swider shared his experience with Google
Glass as an integrated part of his lifestyle: “With the sound of my voice, I took hands-free photos
by saying ‘Okay Glass, take a picture.’ I instructed it to upload the resulting point-of-view image
to Twitter and Facebook and attach a caption, all with voice commands. I saw flight information
automatically beam to my eye with a gentle Google Now reminder the day before traveling. The
weather for both my departure and destination cities, and directions to the airport were already
being provided by this instinctual software. All of this data appeared in the top right corner of my
vision, all without the need to take out my
smartphone.” By combining Google Glass
with Google’s highly instinctual service
Google Now, Swider was able to become less
dependent on an external device, and consume
specific and accurate information only on
Figure 7 - Matt Swider wearing a pair of Google Glass
demand.
Google made the impossible possible by releasing an outrageously futuristic technology
and adapting it to the user’s everyday lifestyle. However, reality shows us that overcoming the
barrier of identity and awkwardness is hard. A head-mounted piece of technology is still hardly
considered a personal statement that many can value, and beta-testers of the glasses experienced
massive social disapproval, sometimes even deteriorating into verbal teasing and physical
violence. The first versions of Google Glass were completely slaughtered by critics, and it was not
until Diane Von Furstenberg bravely featured them for the first time on a runway in her 2013
spring collection that anyone was willing to accept them as a fashionable item.
Wearable technologies, like the Google Glass we just briefed through, are still not marketed
or manufactured for the masses, but rather as a luxurious artifact, and face a very particular
audience. Does it necessarily mean they are not ready for mass production and consumption? I
highly doubt it. Google Glass’s marketing strategy, starting with a selected amount of lucky beta
testers and then progressing to the runway, shows us that these products are more commonly
restricted in order to increase their desirability rather than because of some operational difficulties.
But if we learned anything from the evolution of fashion throughout the years, all we witnessed
up until now is definitely only the tip of the iceberg.