The design process of a multi-disciplinary tool for developing interactive textiles

Interactive textiles embed sensing and actuating capabilities in their fibers and structure. Adoption of interactive textiles is complex requiring a combination of competences or collaboration between interaction designers, textile designers and textile engineers. These disciplines are typically organized in separate and unconnected departments, using different vocabularies, and requiring different information. Through focus groups with interaction designers, and interviews with experts from the three domains we developed the Interactive Textile Library (ITL). The ITL is a multi-disciplinary tool combining physical samples and a digital platform showing material characteristics, experiential qualities, interactive technology, manufacturing process and support to create and hack the samples. The ITL was evaluated with professional designers who valued the physical samples and videos. Results provide recommendations for researchers developing interactive textile material libraries that could facilitate incorporation of interactive textiles in design practice and reduce fabrication time of prototypes.