Research-Through-Design and Chemistry: Reflections On A Multi-Disciplinary Workflow Process Of UV Sensing Wearables For Sun Safety

This paper documents the design research, concept design and digital fabrication process of UV Wear -a collection of smart non-digital 3D printed accessories developed by a multi-disciplinary team of designers, materials scientists, and digital fabrication technicians.The project utilised the multi-disciplinary expertise of the team to create UV responsive accessories that embed interactive capability with aesthetically appealing and customisable designs.This was achieved through integrating diarylethene photoswitch material into the 3D printing process.Through the documentation of our multi-disciplinary Research-through-Design (RtD) workflow process, which fuses work across the chemistry lab, design studio, and design fabrication lab, the contributions of this paper are: 1) We present our multidisciplinary RtD workflow model as a case study, providing detailed descriptions of the design research phases conducted within this model; 2) We reflect on challenges that multi-disciplinary RtD projects face, and offer prompts for future translational design work.