Wearing Embodied Emotions

This chapter focuses on the research questions and the methodology that is based on a design practice. The practice-based design research addressed in this book argues that wearable technology can provide embodied emotional communication, of which the affective bandwidth level is increased by the presence of multimodal sensorial experience of emotions. This research aims to discover new ways of sensing, communicating, and experiencing emotions through wearable technology by carrying HCI (Human-to-Computer Interaction) into an alternative context, where technology dissolves in use and the interaction begins to enhance Human-to-Human interaction.  Emotion gives sense to people’s behaviours in order to add their relationships more understanding, trust and intimacy. It is an important fact of interpersonal relationships. Nevertheless, with new communication technologies the distinction between self and society has been evolving towards a more flexible state and shifting between interpersonal to mass, private to public. While new media and communication technologies are reshaping social dynamics and privacy issues, they are introducing new interaction avenues that change traditional communication habits. The research that is addressed in this book aims to enrich the social bonds by enabling people to communicate their inner states through a tacit interaction achieved by wearable technology. This research questions if wearable technology can be a social medium to create new social interaction. Over the last decades, people have become more and more aware of their wellbeing and the state of their bodies. Body sensor networks are embedded into garments and track bodily data in order to sustain healthier lives. In this new era, psychological wellbeing, such as stress control and emotion regulation have become important issues. By stimulating different sensorial channels, emotions can be induced or regulated in the body. This research aims to find new ways of S. Uğur, Wearing Embodied Emotions, PoliMI SpringerBriefs, DOI: 10.1007/978-88-470-5247-5_1, The Author(s) 2013 1 evoking emotions through wearable technology in order to heighten the awareness of wearer’s psychological state. This research questions how wearable technology can awaken sensorial perception and induce emotions. The boundaries of art, design, fashion and technology are dissolving and creating a joint experimental area of research, which leads to product developments for the new needs of rapidly changing lifestyles. Wearable technology is one of the results of these overlapping disciplines. This research aims to explore the implementation of wearable technology in a social interaction context by applying the inter-disciplinary knowledge in a design practice. While underlining the designer’s role in developing new scenarios for technologies, this research questions how a multi-disciplinary approach can open new ways to design wearable technology. While textiles are soft and intimate, technology is hard and cold. This research aims to explore various ways to integrate garments and technology in order to find new interaction avenues that are more human friendly, soft and homogenous. Moreover, wearable technology is still a new phenomenon for people to accept in their daily lives, although there is a very fast adaptation to new technologies. Due to the inventions of smart textiles and soft electronics, wearable technology might move to a more aesthetic level through leaving its cyborg look behind (Seymour 2008). This research aims to be an example for designers to create socially acceptable and aesthetic forms of wearable technology. This research questions how a designer can integrate technology and garments by fulfilling the user needs. Emotion has been an issue that is sometimes hidden from public view and is strongly related to privacy and intimacy. According to Klosek (2000), personal privacy has become an important issue because of the wide availability and use of electronic networks that create the ease of personal data circulation. This research tries to explore how users react to privacy issues relating to wearable technology that expresses emotions.