Sketch 2 Full Explanation

I suppose I've been busy and had not fully explained what the garment with the flower was all about.

The Main Idea
When a user wears the garment and an intimate friend/family member touches the sensor on the garment, a flower on the shoulder would open and close.

We have divided the varying touches into four categories from least intimate to most intimate:

1. Pat on the shoulder, as in a greeting

2. Friendly Hug, as in greeting or show of friendship

3. Stroke on the back, as in comforting gesture

4. Firm Hug, intimate friends

If a user is patted on the shoulder by a friend, the flower opens slowly.

If a user is hugged tightly by an intimate friend, the flower opens quickly.

Concept Behind the Idea

The idea was to promote a sense of friendship and trust. We explored the potential of the sense of touch to provide intimacy in friendship. The flower acts as a metaphor for opening up to people, because we wouldn't let strangers give us a hug, and even if they are friends we are still selective about who can stroke our back or give us a firm hug. The more intimate the gesture is received, the more the wearer opens up to her friend.

Inside the flower we embedded an LED to strengthen the metaphor, so the closed bud protects the LED, and the opening of the flower reveals the LED (which represents personal connection).

Embodiment

This garment is meant to be worn as casual everyday wear, so we had to think about which places to sew the sensors to make the actions natural, because it would not make sense to make the audience go out of their way to purposely touch the sensors. 

While testing our garment, we had to act out the scenarios of a greeting, comforting, and take photos of where our hands were placed, so we could sew the sensors where the hands would naturally touch them.

Mechanical Flower

The flower was very difficult to make. We originally wanted to make the flower petals attached to a right of spandex. Fishing wire would go through the spandex, and when the servomotor turns, the wires would be pulled, and the flower would close. However, the spandex could not be tight enough to close all the petals.

So our final idea was to attach each petal to a string, and have the servomotor pull the strings downwards from the middle, causing the petals to rise up and enclose the middle.

Coding

Unfortunately, our project could not work out for the presentation because we did not figure out the servomotor code. However, the mechanics of the flower were fine, and the varying touches of the sensors were successfully sensed.

Feedback we received was to make the flower's motion more fluid and natural to improve the aesthetics.

For our third project, my team and I plan to explore new ideas, but after the semester we plan to finish this project.