Weaving Textile-form Interfaces: A Material-Driven Design Journey

A woven textile-form is a form that is constructed simultaneously as the textile is woven. Interfaces designed with this approach hold undisclosed potential for rich interactions. However, the design of woven textile-form interfaces requires specialised tacit knowledge, which is limited even in craft and practice spaces; and it is therefore inaccessible to HCI designers. To bridge this gap, we present the material-driven journey of a multidisciplinary team to design a woven textile-form interface using various techniques such as paper models and diagrams to design for multi-layer weaving. Replacing traditional yarns with conductive yarn, we achieved woven textile-forms with electronic sensing capabilities. By outlining our process, the pictorial highlights the challenges and opportunities of textile-form thinking for HCI designers. Additionally, its printed version serves as a ‘paper prototyping tool’ for designers to gain hands-on experience developing textile-form interfaces.