In the making - designing with smart textiles

Abstract

The past decade has seen an increasing interest in our small-scale experimental textiles at the design lab at the Swedish School of Textiles. Representatives from various industries and professions have visited to find out more about our so called smart textiles and to collect product samples. We want to encourage designers to work directly with the textile material in the design process to enlarge the understanding for how to design with smart textile materials. Weand we are currently working to develop a collection of samples of “smart textile sample collection ́s for designers to use and work with, enabling them to better understand the great potential of smart textiles. This article also describes some new design variables regarding dynamic textile patterns; a result from the thesis Designing Dynamic Textile Patterns (Worbin 2010).