DESIGNING EXPERIENCES AND INTERACTIONS
This lecture introduces the basic principles and reasons to consider Interaction Design and User Experience in a fashion context. It highlights our transition from the Information to the Experience Age, exploring the move away from the production of products to the production of experiences, illustrated through the examples of gamification and performance economy.
Learning Outcomes
- Describe and define Interaction and Experience Design in the Fashion-Tech sector.
DEFINING NEAR FUTURE TRENDS
A discussion on how we can identify and visualise societal behaviours to define critically near future trends enabling the generation of ideas for fashion tech products, processes or services through research.
Learning Outcomes
- Demonstrate the ability to research, visualise and critically evaluate a societal trend providing the research basis for a 'fashion tech' product.
DESIGNING FAR FUTURE SCENARIOS
An introduction on techniques and processes to envision future speculative design scenarios.
Learning Outcomes
- Understand the purpose of designing future scenarios and speculative fictions to highlight technological impacts.
- Be able to critique the now common use of avatars in relation to the far future applications it may find.
SOCIAL IMAGINARIES OF EMERGING & NEAR FUTURE TECHNOLOGIES
An exploration on how collective understandings of technology and futuristic design can shape the development of new products. Using the concept of Sociotechnical Imaginaries, the presentation introduces ways in which Social Scientists are engaging with design methods to explore people’s fears, hopes, desires and understandings in relation to emerging and near future technologies.
Learning Outcomes
- Identify and evaluate individual and societal beliefs which shape the design and product development of emerging fashion technologies.
RESEARCH AND DESIGN AROUND PEOPLE: AN OVERVIEW OF QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS
The lecture provides an overview on the importance of putting people at the centre of the research and design process by presenting and specifying different ways of doing so. It informs about qualitative people-centric research methodologies that could be used in design practice. By comparing the different methodologies, the lecture gives a general overview on the possibilities to guide on which specific methods and techniques to use. The lecture provides also insights regarding how to conduct ethical user-oriented research, helpful in giving basic information related to how to fit user research into the design process, planning user research projects that are valid and ethically sound.
Learning Outcomes
- Describe the main characteristics of the research methods to design for and around people.
- Describe main approaches of qualitative research methods.
- Distinguish between different research and design approaches around people.
- Compare main qualitative research methods.
- Use to conduct ethical user-oriented research.
- Prepare user research projects that are valid and ethically sound.
- Select the appropriate method for research and design around people.
ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The lecture focuses on ethnography, providing an historical overview and definition from its beginning in the anthropological discipline. This lecture describes the main principles, features and opportunities of ethnography referring to the practices and processes associated to ethnographic research, the main tools and strategies such as observational studies, interviews and participants provided contents and related field notes. In addition, the lecture highlights the main type of ethnographic research methodologies, applied to design and architecture (such as focused ethnography) and also happening in the digital realm (such as digital ethnography, virtual ethnography and netnography).
Learning Outcomes
- Describe the main principles, features and opportunities of ethnography.
- Outline practices and processes associated to ethnographic research.
- Give examples of the main tools and strategies such as observational studies, interviews and participants provided contents and related field notes.
- Compare the main type of ethnographic research methodologies.
- Select the most appropriate tools and strategies to conduct the research.
- Develop an ethnographic research by defining all the phases.
DESIGN ETHNOGRAPHY FOR FASHION-TECH
The lecture focuses on the application of ethnography in the design discipline (Design Ethnography), referring to the different strategies, methods, techniques and tools (observation, interviews, participants provided contents, and related field notes) used to develop user experience research for Fashion-Tech design products and services, considering people-technology interactions that need to tackle more complex issues in the ethnographic research: design ethnography becomes based on visual artefacts, considers sensory perception and experiences, it is multi-sited, post human and entangled.
Learning Outcomes
- Describe the main characteristics of the research methods to design for and around people.
- Describe main approaches of qualitative research methods.
- Distinguish between different research and design approaches around people.
- Compare main qualitative research methods.
- Prepare user research projects that are valid and ethically sound.
- Select the appropriate method for research and design around people.
MEASURING PRODUCT EXPERIENCE: METHODS AND TOOLS
An introduction to Smart Textile Products as an advanced material and interface between the user and the environment. Methods and tools for measuring product experience in smart clothing and wearables are explained in a 3 level approach of performance, wearability and sustainability.
Learning Outcomes
- Explain how to take the user's perspective into account with a User-Centred Design approach.
- Relate comfort and wearability to Product experience.
- Identify three level of comfort in Smart Clothing.
- Distinguish the difference between Active Textile and E-Textiles, Smart Clothing and Wearables.
INTERNET OF THING & THING CENTERED DESIGN
This lecture introduces the concept of the Internet of Things and briefly discusses the history of connected wearable technologies. Next it outlines the principles of ‘Posthuman Ethnographies’ and ‘Thing Centred Design’ as approaches to document, understand and analyse the life of a non-human thing and its everyday interactions with humans and other things. Finally the lecture concludes by exploring how this analysis can inform the development of design requirements for an IOT fashion wearable.
Learning Outcomes
- Describe and define the principles of ‘Posthuman Ethnographies’ and ‘Thing Centred Design’.
- Develop design requirements for an IOT fashion wearable.