UbiComp / ISWC 2023
ISWC Design Exhibition

The ISWC Design Exhibition is an ongoing event taking place from Tuesday the 10th until Thursday the 12th.

The ISWC 2023 Juried Design Exhibition is a captivating showcase of original works focusing on wearable technologies and innovations related to the human body. This exhibition celebrates the intersection of technology and the human form through a diverse array of creative contributions.

Featured works will incorporate elements such as on-body sensing, sensor networks, responsive fashion technologies, body enhancements like bionic limbs and smart prosthetics, and wearables designed for professional use, mobile healthcare, entertainment, and more. Submissions that seamlessly combine functionality and aesthetics will be highlighted.

The ISWC Design Exhibition will take place in the Coba Room.  The opening will take place before the conference welcome reception from 5:30 pm to 6:00 pm. Attendees can visit it during coffee breaks, and luncheons.

The exhibition categories are:

1) Functional: Highlighting wearables designed with a strong focus on practicality, addressing specific problems or needs through technological solutions.

2) Aesthetic: Showcasing wearables that prioritize visual appeal and artistic impact achieved through innovative technology.

3) Fiber Arts: This category encompasses non-wearable innovations that incorporate textiles or fibers, with an emphasis on either functionality or aesthetics.

Awards:

Exceptional designs will receive recognition and awards in three categories: Aesthetic, Functional, and Fiber Art.

Design Exhibits

Title Authors DOI Type
Reconfigurable, Adhesive-Free, Wearable Skin Strain Device Robert Pettys-Baker;Brad Holschuh Design Exhibition
Breezy the Calm Monster: Soft Toy Design Combined with Pervasive Technology to Teach Deep Breathing Aisha F. Iskanderani;Edgar R. Rodriguez Ramirez;Annette M. E. Henderson;Catherine Caudwell Design Exhibition
MoCa'Collection: Normalizing Dynamic Textile Geometry with Capacitive Sensing in Design Centric Wearables Daniel Geißler;Esther Friederike Zahn;Hymalai Bello;Lala Shakti Swarup Ray;Emil Woop;Bo Zhou;Paul Lukowicz;Gesche Joost Design Exhibition
Kirigami Antennas Zoe Kaputa;Afroditi Psarra Design Exhibition
Designing Dissolving Wearables Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez;Lily M Gabriel;Mikhaila Friske;Shanel Wu;Sasha De Koninck;Laura Devendorf;Mirela Alistar Design Exhibition
Privee: A Wearable for Real-Time Bladder Monitoring System Ruoyu Zhang;Ruijie Fang;Chongzhou Fang;Houman Homayoun;Gozde Goncu Berk Design Exhibition
Social Prosthesis: Social Interaction Through 3D Dynamic Makeup Morgan Chen;Jingwen Zhu;Hsin-Liu (Cindy) Kao Design Exhibition
Haikeus: Transmuting Ecological Grieving into Action Galina Mihaleva;Abigail Dalton;Mary Fitzgerald;Abhik Chowdhury Design Exhibition
Plug-and-Play Wearables: A Repositionable E-Textile Garment System to Support Custom Fit for Lower-Limb Rehabilitation Applications Heidi Woelfle;Olaitan Adeleke;Niharikha Subash;Alireza Golgouneh;Brad Holschuh;Lucy E. Dunne Design Exhibition
Weaving Augmented Reality Markers Nikita Menon K. P.;Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez;Hannah Curran;Sasha De Koninck;Laura Devendorf Design Exhibition
BioSparks: Jewelry as Electrochemical Sweat Biosensors with Modular, Repurposing and Interchangeable Approaches Shuyi Sun;Alejandra Ruiz;Sima Pirmoradi;Katia Vega Design Exhibition

BioSparks: Jewelry as Electrochemical Sweat Biosensors with Modular, Repurposing and Interchangeable Approaches

Shuyi Sun, Alejandra Ruiz, Sima Pirmoradi, Katia Vega
University of California, Davis

This paper presents BioSparks, a wearable device that detects glucose levels in sweat through electrochemical biosensors created with traditional jewelry techniques. It incorporates interchangeable electrodes that facilitates their replacement after their lifetime, and employs a repurposing method to reuse the discarded electrodes within the jewelry’s chain. The modular design enables the wearable to be placed on various body parts, including the neck, wrist and waist. The paper outlines our design considerations for Wearability Factors for Jewelry Biosensors, and the fabrication process combining traditional jewelry techniques and electrochemistry. Our technical evaluation shows the performance of our biosensor under ten different glucose concentrations.

Breezy the Calm Monster: Soft Toy Design Combined with Pervasive Technology to Teach Deep Breathing

Aisha F. Iskanderani, University of Wellington
Edgar R Rodríguez Ramírez, University of Wellington
Annette M. E. Henderson, University of Auckland
Catherine Caudwell, University of Wellington

Anger dysregulation can lead to aggression and peer rejection in early childhood. Anger episodes and temper tantrums frequently escalate, leaving parents and young children needing effective emotion regulation interventions. This research investigates how designing a playful interaction with ubiquitous technology can help parents teach young children emotion regulation strategies such as deep breathing. Breezy is a soft toy with an app and a storybook that helps parents and engages them in teaching deep breathing as an anger regulation strategy. The soft toy has sensory and physical features and can be held as a puppet, which helps young children to connect with the toy. The digital app addresses facial expressions and physiological components of emotions through sensory and interactive features that encourage identifying emotions. The storybook facilitates a familiar context for parents’ engagement through playful learning. The interactive system provides parents with opportunities to teach their young children to identify and label anger and practice and model age- appropriate breathing exercises. This research aims to inform the design of future educational and playful interactions for emotional competence skills, as well as to broaden their application and promote their use in homes.

Designing Dissolving Wearables

Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez, University of Colorado Boulder
Lily M Gabriel, University of Colorado Boulder
Mikhaila Friske, University of Colorado Boulder
Shanel Wu, University of Colorado Boulder
Sasha de Koninck, University of Colorado Boulder
Laura Devendorf, University of Colorado Boulder
Mirela Alistar, University of Colorado Boulder

Bio-based materials facilitate the development of more sustainable devices and wearables, expanding the range of design possibilities beyond conventional materials. Our work with biofoam explores one such quality, dissolving, as a unique affordance for designing and interacting with wearables. We developed techniques to make biofoam yarns, and used them to craft three wearables: “Seasonal Footwear,” a “Reveal Bralette,” and an “Unfolding Lace Top.” These wearables incorporate sections that dissolve in water, allowing customization to suit the user’s needs. These wearables illustrate short- term use cases, such as a one-time reveal or shape change. We explore this novel design space as sustainable ephemeral fashion, where bio-based dissolving materials enable revealing, transformative, and interactive functionalities.

Haikeus: Transmuting Ecological Grieving into Action

Galina Mihaleva, Arizona State University
Mary Fitzgerald, Arizona State University
Abhik Chowdhury, Arizona State University
Abigail Dalton, Arizona State University

Combined with the unprecedented stress of the COVID-19 crisis and the increase in social unrest, human-caused environmental disasters are having a profound impact on well-being, resulting in a dramatic spike in mental health issues. Studies are emerging daily around concepts of ecological grieving stress, depression, anxiety, and a host of emotions that are surfacing and increasing in our modern times. From eco-nostalgia to eco-anxiety and eco-grief, our responses to climate change, environmental devastation, and social unrest can prevent us from taking positive action, often leading to existential crises. Our proposed project, Haikeus: Transmuting Ecological Grieving into Action, works directly at the interface of some of humanity’s wicked problems, which are complex, challenging to solve, and hard to fully understand. The aim of this project is to bring awareness and motivation for transmuting such an emotion into an action through the power of creativity. We further argue that the established methods could facilitate a more nuanced understanding of organizational barriers to communicate its potential value to proceed with the change.

Kirigami Antennas

Zoe Kaputa, University of Washington
Afroditi Psarra, University of Washington

With the progression of technology as integrated into daily life, physical tech has become increasingly embedded or hidden from the user’s view. Because of this design change, many of the aesthetics that previously defined everyday technology have disappeared from the public eye. Our ability to connect the capability of technology with the spacial world it utilizes has disappeared with it. This notion is especially true for antenna design. An object that was once visible on cars, houses, and phones is now so embedded in the devices that use it that its technology is essentially formless. Kirigami Antennas is a research exploration centering on e-textile meta-materials, designing antennas that are cognizant of their use and relation to space. This collection of antennas are not embedded nor hidden. They instead borrow from the art of Kirigami to re-insert themselves into the 3D space from which they receive their signals. Through experimentation with Kirigami antenna shapes, we are able to design freestanding lace antennas that effectively receive electromagnetic signals at a wide range of frequencies, picking up AM, FM, and HAM radio, along with other data transmissions. Kirigami Antennas provides a space for experimentation with antennas as objects that help us reach and search through space.

MoCa’Collection: Normalizing Dynamic Textile Geometry with Capacitive Sensing in Design Centric Wearables

Daniel Geißler, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence
Esther Friederike Zahn, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence
Hymalai Bello, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence
Lala Shakti Swarup Ray, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence
Emil Woop, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence
Bo Zhou, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence
Paul Lukowicz, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence
Gesche Joost, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence

In this work, we promote capacitive sensing as a versatile smart textile modality through a collection of functional wearable designs. Considering the large variety of possible garment design concepts, we outline an approach to implement smart sensing technology into garments while maintaining these diverse design possibilities. After introducing the basic functionalities of capacitive sensing and the process of designing and building a smart garment, we present an assortment of garments enabled by this technology within the MoCa’Collection. Each of the projects serves a different purpose, built by people representing different backgrounds from electrical engineers, computer scientists, digital artists to smart fashion designers, starting from technical design over digital art to our latest design of a strongly design-oriented full-body capturing suit implementing the proposed technology.

Plug-and-Play Wearables: A Repositionable E-Textile Garment System to Support Custom Fit for Lower-Limb Rehabilitation Applications

Heidi Woelfle, University of Minnesota
Olaitan Adeleke, University of Minnesota
Niharikha Subash, University of Minnesota
Alireza Golgouneh, University of Minnesota
Brad Holschuh, University of Minnesota
Lucy E. Dunne, University of Minnesota

Fit of an e-textile garment has become increasingly important as more advanced wearable technology applications demand precise placement of sensors and actuators. Human anthropometry is complex and varied, and for many applications, a single e-textile garment cannot accurately fit a variety of users. One such example is lower-limb rehabilitation applications, which rely on precise placement of sensors and actuators with respect to joints and muscles for each individual user. Here, we present the development of a multi-layer, stretchable, flexible e-textile system, which affords quick and easy repositioning of components on the garment surface. Beyond custom fitting, this infrastructure also affords dynamic functionality of the garment, by adding and replacing sensors and actuators to enable a wide variety of applications.

Privee: A Wearable for Real-Time Bladder Monitoring System

Ruoyu Zhang, University of California, Davis
Ruijie Fang, University of California, Davis
Chongzhou Fang, University of California, Davis
Houman Homayoun, University of California, Davis
Gozde Goncu Berk, University of California, Davis

Urinary incontinence (UI) is a prevalent condition affecting millions of individuals worldwide, leadingto various physical, social, and psychological challenges that diminish their quality of life. Currentmanagement approaches primarily focus on containment rather than proactive monitoring andwarning systems. This paper presents the development and evaluation of a novel wearable technologycalled Privee, designed as an unobtrusive undergarment to monitor bladder fullness in real-time.Privee utilizes e-textile-based bioimpedance spectroscopy technology, which noninvasively assessesbladder fullness by analyzing the electrical properties of body tissues and fluids. The undergarmentincorporates eight embroidered electrodes and textile transmission lines seamlessly integrated into thefabric. By continuously monitoring the bioimpedance signals from the bladder, Privee provides real-time information about the bladder’s fullness level. This data is processed using a specialized algorithmto estimate the need for urination. The noninvasive nature of Privee eliminates the discomfort andrisks associated with invasive monitoring methods, offering a user-friendly and convenient solutionfor individuals with UI, overactive bladder, or post-operative care needs. This innovative technologyhas the potential to improve patients’ quality of life and optimize healthcare costs associated with UImanagement.

Reconfigurable, Adhesive-Free, Wearable Skin Strain Device

Robert Pettys-Baker, University of Minnesota
Brad Holschuh, University of Minnesota

Skin-strain – the act of stretching the skin – is an interesting (but generally understudied) mode ofhaptic stimulation. Producing artificial skin strain on the body using a wearable device requires a clearunderstanding of the body product relationship between the device and the user. We present awearable device capable of creating dozens of unique skin strain experiences on the wearer through anovel shape memory alloy (SMA) actuator + reconfigurable hook-and-eye attachment architecture.Not only can this architecture create spatially- and temporally-customizable skin strain experiences, itdoes so without the use of temporary / permanent adhesives (a typical limitation of other skin straindevice designs). We present the iterative design process from early working prototypes to the mostrecently developed devices, including the underlying design criteria and decisions.

Social Prosthesis: Social Interaction Through 3D Dynamic Makeup

Morgan Chen, Cornell University
Jingwen Zhu, Cornell University
Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao, Cornell University

Prosthetic makeup is the use of prosthetic materials for cosmetic or makeup effects to extend the skinand features. Commonly used to simulate wounds or exaggerate physical characteristics, prostheticmakeup is usually created for film or theatrical purposes, rather than for everyday fashion or socialwearability. Social Prosthesis is a design project which aims to introduce interactivity, movement, andaesthetic within silicone prosthetics by providing design considerations and fabrication techniquesunique to on-face wearables. Through opening up opportunities for cosmetic expression andstorytelling through dynamic makeup, Social Prosthesis invokes the sociality of beauty—the changeand movement that happens when we alter our appearances in contact with others.

Weaving Augmented Reality Markers

Nikita Menon K. P, University of Colorado Boulder
Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez, University of Colorado Boulder
Hannah Curran, University of Colorado Boulder
Sasha de Koninck, University of Colorado Boulder
Laura Devendorf, University of Colorado Boulder

This paper presents the use of weaving as a technique to create functional augmented reality (AR)markers using different textile structures and colors. We conducted experiments with plain, twill, andsatin weaves, as well as varying colors in the warp, to test the effectiveness of the markers. Ourfindings show that weaving is a viable method for creating AR markers, and the software can detectmarkers even with varying colors and slightly misaligned quadrants. This work opens up newpossibilities for weaving and textile structures in AR design.

Exhibition Info-Guide

Click on the image below to learn more about individual exhibits as you browse through the exhibition gallery.

UbiComp / ISWC

Past Conferences

The ACM international joint conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp) is the result of a merger of the two most renowned conferences in the field: Pervasive and UbiComp. While it retains the name of the latter in recognition of the visionary work of Mark Weiser, its long name reflects the dual history of the new event.

The ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computing (ISWC) discusses novel results in all aspects of wearable computing, and has been colocated with UbiComp and Pervasive since 2013.

A complete list of UbiComp, Pervasive, and ISWC past conferences is provided below.