Designing wearables is a complex task that includes many layers, such as wearability, interactivity, functionality, social and cultural considerations. For decades now, toolkits are proposed to aid users in the design of smart accessories and garments. However, the task of designing toolkits for wearables has not received a comprehensive discussion and systematic reflection.

This one-day workshop gathers researchers and practitioners, who are experienced with the design, use and evaluation of wearable toolkits. It aims to provide a venue to discuss specific challenges, opportunities, and lessons learned around developing and evaluating toolkits for wearables. What challenges are there while designing toolkits for particular audiences (i.e., designers, engineers, makers)? In what ways do the toolkits help individuals in design processes? How do toolkits impact the outcoming designs? How should we evaluate them?

We invite candidates to submit a 500-word abstract (and a complementing poster upon acceptance). The submission should highlight the toolkits, their audiences and purposes in the design process, and share reflections on using and/or evaluating the toolkits for designing wearables. The abstract should be compiled in one PDF and submitted through Easy Chair. They will be reviewed based on the relevance to the workshop theme and potential for contributing to discussions. Upon acceptance, we will require participants to prepare a complementing poster until the camera-ready deadline. The accepted submissions will be available online through the workshop website. For further questions, please contact caglar.genc [at] ulapland.fi.

The workshop will be conducted in a hybrid format (both in-person and virtual). At least one author of each accepted submission must attend the workshop and all participants must register for both the workshop and for at least one day of the conference.

Submission Deadline:
February 24, 2022 (Extended)
March 9, 2022
Notification:
March 14, 2022
Camera-ready version:
March 17, 2022
Workshop:
April 30, 2022

SUBMISSION:

The workshop invites the submission of toolkit implementations, case studies, methodological notes, and position papers. The submission should highlight the toolkits, their audiences and purposes in the design process, and share reflections on using and/or evaluating the toolkits for designing wearables. We encourage multi-disciplinary participation around topics with a background in, but not limited to, HCI, design, arts, fashion, and social sciences.

FORMAT:

We invite interested candidates to submit a 500-word abstract with ACM Submission Format. Upon acceptance, the participants will be expected to prepare and submit a complementing poster (A1) until the Camera-ready deadline. Submissions (in PDF only) should be sent through Easy Chair

REVIEW PROCESS:

The submissions will be reviewed based on the relevance to the workshop theme and potential for contributing to discussions. The accepted submissions will be available online through the workshop website.

WORKSHOP STRUCTURE:

The workshop will be conducted in a hybrid manner, allowing both in-person and virtual attendance. The workshop is structured in two sessions (morning and afternoon):

Show and Tell

Participants will present and reflect on their own toolkit experience through the lens of four themes. The presentations will be made in the form of posters streamed through video conferencing software that will be projected on a screen in the workshop space. In-person attendees will be encouraged to bring demos to support their presentations. The demonstrations will also be streamed to online attendees through a webcam. After and during each presentation, discussions will be encouraged.

Group Work - Round Table Discussions

Small groups will be formed based on participants’ experiences in wearable toolkits (i.e., different target audiences and purposes). While grouping we will also consider online vs in-person attendance to combine participants with the same type of attendance in the same groups for convenient discussions. Groups will discuss four themes based on the similarity and differences of each participant’s experiences about designing, implementing and/or evaluating their wearable toolkit. The discussions and brainstorming sessions will be captured through templates prepared in an online whiteboard platform (i.e. Miro), enabling synchronous and asynchronous contributions. At the end of the session, all participants will discuss the outcomes together from a broader perspective identifying wearable toolkit design challenges and opportunities for each theme.

THEMES:

During the workshop, discussions will be structured into four main themes:
The audience of wearable toolkits:

We will discuss what kind of specific challenges there are while designing toolkits for different audiences (i.e., designers, engineers, makers). Designing and prototyping wearables require practical skills such as fashion production techniques (i.e. sewing, garment construction techniques), electronic assembly, and programming, as well as an understanding of social and cultural considerations that emerge from designing worn artifacts. Yet, not all user groups might have all the required skills. Under this theme, participants will reflect on their experiences with wearable toolkits for different user groups. We will identify strategies on how toolkits appropriate their approach to user groups with different skill sets. 

Purposes of wearable toolkits:
The different toolkits might aim for different purposes, such as introducing basic skills to design wearables, fostering exploration and creativity while designing different types of wearables (i.e. interactive accessories, garments and wearable XR applications) as well as allowing quick try-outs about different design parameters like interactivity, wearability, etc. and providing a platform for building final design of the wearable. We will discuss participants’ targetted goals while developing wearable toolkits, as well as identifying what kind of wearable toolkits might suit better for different purposes. 
Toolkits’ impact on wearable designs:
The general incentive of the toolkits is to facilitate the creation of technology by simplifying and speeding up the process. However, there is often a tension between easy to use wearable toolkits and enabling wide explorations (i.e. with different materials, interaction possibilities and wearable form factors): For instance, toolkits that are easy to put together usually have hard PCBs and doesn’t enable individuals to explore what’s possible with textiles (i.e., soft/fuzzy/stretchy). We will discuss how wearable toolkits impact what can be designed, the challenges behind helping users explore a wide range of opportunities, and how these are or can be addressed in wearable toolkits.
Deployment and evaluation:
Researchers have different ways to apply and evaluate wearable toolkits such as conducting co-design workshops or collecting crowdfunding and shipping the kits to a larger audience. The last theme focuses on the challenges and opportunities of different methodologies in evaluating wearable toolkits. Within the scope of this theme, we will also ask participants to reflect on the evaluation results and comment on the broader impact that the toolkits might create in society.

ORGANIZERS:

Çağlar Genç

(main contact) is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Lapland, the faculty of Art and Design. During his Ph.D., he researched the relationship between fashion and computation materials to design wearable displays. His current works include prototyping tools for interactive jewelry and sustainable materials for tangible interaction.

Oguz 'Oz' Buruk

is a Marie Curie Fellow in the Gamification Group at Tampere University, Tampere, Finland. He holds a PhD in Interaction Design (2017) from Koç University-Arçelik Research Center for Creative Industries (KUAR). His work focuses on designing playful wearables, and he leads two research projects focusing on integrating wearables to mainstream gaming and extended reality environments.

Lee Jones

is a PhD Candidate at Carleton University. In her research she focuses on e-textile crafting toolkits and learning scaffolds to help support novices as they learn this hybrid craft. Her recent projects have focused on personal fabrication, sustainability, and DIY repair.

Kirill Ragozin

is a postdoctoral researcher at Keio University Graduate School of Media Design. His major research contributions are in mixed reality thermal interactions. His research interests include eye tracking and interaction design with smart glasses.

Kate Hartman

is an Associate Professor at OCAD University, where she is Graduate Program Director of Digital Futures and the founding Director of Social Body Lab – a research and development team dedicated to exploring body-centric technologies in the social context. She is the author of the book Make: Wearable Electronics, was an artist‐in‐residence at Autodesk’s Pier 9, and has work included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Oskar Juhlin

is a professor at Stockholm University at the Department of Computing and Systems Sciences. He is also professor II at the Department of Information Science and Media Studies at Bergen University. He has an interdisciplinary background spanning technology and social science. Oskar has conducted research and managed groups in many design fields such as fashion tech, social media and road traffic, animal computer interaction, and video interaction.

Kai Kunze

With over fifteen years of experience in the Wearable Computing research field, Kai works as Professor at the Graduate School of Media Design, Keio University, Yokohama, Japan. Beforehand, he held an Assistant Professorship at Osaka Prefecture University. He received a Summa Cum Laude for his phD thesis from Passau University. His work experience includes research visits/internships at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), MIT Media Lab, Sunlabs Europe and the German Stock Exchange.

Jonna Häkkilä

is a professor for industrial design at the Faculty of Art and Design, University of Lapland, Finland. Her work focuses on user-centric design of mobile and ubiquitous computing. She is currently leading cross-disciplinary research projects addressing TechFashion, wearable displays, and combining traditional handcraft with HCI.

Contact Us:
caglar.genc[at]ulapland.fi