Designing Interactive Clothing to Raise Awareness of and Comfort the Wearer Suffering from Anxiety

Anxiety is a mental disorder that many adults may experience during their life. With this subject come many prejudices and even discrimination of those suffering, and the stigma on the topic is still very much present. This work describes the design of the interactive clothing, namely "ECHO;''aimed to comfort those suffering from anxiety, raise awareness of it, and deal with it privately and subtly. We designed three interactive garments stimulating the different senses that can help with grounding when experiencing anxiety, including a jacket that starts the conversation on anxiety, a sweater that comforts the wearer, and jeans that help to analyze their fidgeting behavior. By adding another layer of interactivity in clothing, this work reflects one of many possibilities for designers to find the balance between breaking the stigma on and preserving the vulnerability of suffering from mental illnesses in design.