The following interview with Yongsoon Choi provides interesting insights in a meaningful direction technology enhanced fashion is heading.

Technology enhanced clothing that is much less 'geeky' and functional as we might think but more emotional, an attribute clothing is strongly associated with since humans started wearing clothes.


[Eric] What was your first contact with wearable electronic?

[Yongsoon] As a fashion design student at Kookmin University, the most famous fashion design school in Korea, I was passionate about making expressive garments and design drawings of various types.

I worked then at the Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) & Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Solution Provider of IBM Korea as UI designer, web programmer and system engineer for 5 years.

These work experience led me to decide to more deeply study the user and the interaction between design and engineering.

I went to the Graduate School of Techno Design at Kookmin University to study Interaction Design, studying human beings and interactions with other humans and artifacts with a focus on ubiquitous computing, mobile handsets, web, digital games, etc.

In the master course, I found the interesting research possibilities of wearable interactions that were quite different from hand-held and other digitalized media interactions. Many wearable concepts are coming from engineering side and many of them were losing important focusing of “human being” and the goals why we like to wear clothing, not technologies.

Because I’ve studied fashion design, interaction design and some engineering, I focused my studies on wearable systems, wearable interfaces, and wearable interaction.

This led to my master’s thesis entitled, “A study on the wearable computer interface design using the cloth fastening system.”

As it was not easy to explain my human-behavior based wearable interaction concepts by means of texts on my thesis I made some concept designs of electronic garments to explain my ideas.

This was my first start of electronic garment artworks.


[Eric] Did your wearable electronic research project start because you have been experimenting before with eTextile technology or did you select to use wearable technology as best way to visualize the effects you wanted in the context of user interaction design?

[Yongsoon] Honestly, at the begin I made electronic garments for explaining my concept ideas of wearable interactions to make them easily understandable. So I selected  clothing illumination which have a visually impactful and attractive power in during exhibitions and presentations.

I think the visualization and the visual expression on the clothing is just one of the common but most effective and expressional ways of the wearable communication media and interaction methods.

Traditionally, many communication methods have been focused around voice and text-based communication. This direct communication methods are not sufficient to fully express human emotions and contexts.

Body gestures, the touch of a hand, and facial expression are aspects of ambient and indirect communication which can sometimes convey better our intended meaning of words and provide intrinsic information more accurately and with more human warmth.

Clothing has been used as a communication medium since ancient times (e.g. garments and accessories express social positions, abilities, personalities, and occupations, etc). These expressions have especially focused on visual expressions through colours, shapes, and textures on the garments.

But nowadays, we can embed variable smart materials and sensors into clothing, accessories and new synthetic or complex organic fabrics.

As a result, we can express various colours, sounds, textures and even smells and taste expressions through clothing. Consequently, the wearer can express their emotions and feelings using these smart expressions on clothing and soft fabric-based media.

I think, if we could order the priorities of expressions on the clothing, the visual expressions (e.g. the colour changing, the shape or the silhouette changing, the texture changing, the textile changing, etc) will be fundamental and higher priority on the emotional communication media and wearable interaction design for the clothing’s fundamental and traditional characters.

 
[Eric] Your interest is focusing on the emotional, on the delicate part of human communication and interaction. How do you think wearable technologies can contribute to bring your ideas to live, into reality?

[Yongsoon] Absolutely, but, honestly, it needs some more technical advances and material developments to reach out our real lives. But it will definitely be realized in near future.

Wearable technologies have great expressive potential that is amplified through the use of technologies. The illumination of textiles are just one of the results of the potential possibilities in wearable technologies.

As we know, in our contemporary fashion is synonymous with style, decoration, clothing and the way of our lives. Textile illumination and other potential expressions (e.g. visual expressions (color changing, shape or silhouette changing, textile changing, texture changing, etc), auditory expressions, olfactory and gestation expressions) on the fabric and the clothing will fertilize our diverse communication methods, interactions, and media.

The most important issue of the wearable technology future is “human being” who wears the clothing. Because our skins are always contacting with clothing as the second skins and naturally the wearers’ behaviors on the clothing and interaction methods are different from the other media as like, mobile phone, computer, and other digital devices.

To realize the wearable technology ideas the wearable interaction designers have to approach their researches from the basic idea of ‘Human-being’.


[Eric] Are there other technologies which you could use and achieve the same or a similar effect?

[Yongsoon] I used the textile changing effects of illumination in my concept design works using color changing textiles of visual expressions on clothing.

I could say there are 2 methods to realize this solution with currently available technologies. The first one is illuminated materials based of light emitting such as EL, LED, etc.

Honestly, emitting illuminated materials are not easy to be mixed with garment design since the emitting materials use emitting lighting colors. These lighting colours make a visual annoying to the balance of the clothing design.

This technologies are not very impactful and efficient during daytime since illuminated textiles and materials are based on lighting emitting technologies. But these materials are perfect to express glorious and sensitive colours in the dark.

The second one is Thermochromic inks that are changed ink colours according to degrees of temperature. The characteristics of the Themochromic inks are almost opposite with the illuminated emitting materials.

These inks are non-emitting and can express more natural colours on clothing and easier to use for clothing design than illuminating technologies. The down side of Thermochromic inks they are not easy to control to show the colors since the reaction times of heating and cooling to trigger the color change is difficult to control.

To realize the emotional textile changing, I’m still researching shape and texture changing technologies on clothing and the relationships between the human emotions and these expressions.

[Eric] What would be your advice wearable technology development should focus on?

[Yongsoon] Basically I think the final goals of wearable technologies have to proceed to “human being” and we have to keep in mind: “We wear clothing not technology on our body” to research the wearable technologies.

My main research interest into emotional wearable is focusing on wearable interaction methods, wearable interfaces and wearable emotional communication media. For these studies, the relationship between human emotions and variable expressions on clothing isneeded to be explored.

I am studying now the relationship between human emotions and diverse expressions on clothing and garments and user habitual behaviors on the garments that can be used for natural interfaces and interaction methods in wearable technology.

I think, there are two meanings in the term of “soft”, the first meaning is the physical softness and the second is the meaningful softness.

Physically, many researchers do their best to realize soft eTextile that can be used in future. We can finally meet soft displays and clothing devices owing to the development of the NANO technologies and new material engineering of eTextile.

My main concern is meaningful softness in wearable technology. During our communication there are two ways of communicating. The first one is direct communication conveying direct information and the purpose of this communication is transferring exact information.

The second way is indirect communication that conveys indirect information such as our delicate feelings, emotions, context, etc.

I think, clothing is the best suitable communication media for the second communication way. Our skin is always in contact with clothing. Historically our clothing has been playing these communication roles from the ancient times through the diverse visual expressions using garments, accessories, etc.


[Eric] Beside the wearable technology development, how do you see the acceptance of 'emotional' clothing? Clothing that would indicate the wearers emotion which usually more difficult to see?

[Yongsoon] As you know, there are many shoes in the world. We wear different styles and different sized shoes with different purposes. Everyone has different personalities, reasons, situations and own styles.

I think the ‘emotional’ clothing will be just some additions of the clothing we use currently and I hope many people will enjoy technology enhanced clothing offering different styles for different purposes.

Some people who want to express their feelings and emotions via their garments or shoes or accessories may be able to use the emotional clothing like the emoticons on their chatting messengers.

Someday, they can strategically use the emotional clothing for their business or personal reasons. (e.g. we are sometimes using the emoticons to make 'soft air' when we are chatting on text chatting systems or change the status message to express our delicate feelings and situations.)

100 years ago, the telephone was just designed for the verbal communications. We just imagined the opposite’s context and abundant information relying on the voice and the sound information.

Now we can send photos and videos through our phones and can send text based messages, emoticons and emails. What is the difference? I think now we can enjoy the diverse communication media that convey the direct information and indirect information as well.

As I mentioned earlier, clothing is fundamentally different from these kinds of digital media. We are breathing, sleeping, hugging, and feeling together with the clothing.

The potential possibilities and use of emotional clothing is infinite and this new kind of media will definitely provide our delicate emotions another form of interaction with more human warmth.

Thank you very much for this exhaustive and inspirational interview

Korean born Yongsoon Choi studied fashion design at Kookmin University in Korea before he moved to Singapore for a research project at the Mixed Reality lab of the  National University of Singapore. Currently Yongsoon is taking his Ph.D in graduate school of media design in Keio University.