E-textile Production of Wearable Ambient Notification Devices

Abstract

Electronic textiles worn on the body provide interesting opportunities for ambient notification within assistive systems, as they can be seamlessly integrated into everyday clothing and accomodate for completely private modalities, such as thermohaptic feedback. In this paper, we present three different approaches to wearable ambient notification systems in textile for elderly users. We have constructed three interactive shawls, exploring how different outputs for ambient notification can be integrated into industrially knitted fabric. We describe the design process of the prototypes, present the challenges in constructing them and discuss their implications as ambient notification devices.