‘Wear your true lifestyle‘ is a ‘Wearable Senses‘ project from Gordon Tiemstra, student at the Department of Industrial Design of the Eindhoven University of Technology, with the focus on a combination of teenagers, lifestyle, identity and smart fabrics.

Gordon started out by researching the problems teenager encounter with their identity. One of the results of his research was that teenagers in the age group 12 to 16 are very intensely dealing with how to present themselves and their visual appearance.

To present themselves through visual appearance, teenager focus on their clothing but what they often forget is how they present their body via posture. Especially during puberty keeping the correct posture is sometimes difficult since teenager grow relatively fast, feeling insecure with their changing body which often leads to deformation of the spine due to wrong postures over prolonged time.

Gordon’s solution to this problem: Fabric stretch sensors integrated in clothing capable of measuring the posture. If the wearer slides into a ‘lazy’, spine deforming posture the electrically conductive fabric will stretch beyond a certain threshold, indicating a correction is needed.

Once the smart clothing detects via a LilyPad the wearer’s need for posture correction it will signal this via vibration actuators which will give a soft, gentle reminder to straighten up, invisible to others but will be felt by the wearer.

I like the concept of combining therapeutic function with fashion with the use of electrically conductive stretch fabric which seems to be able to attack one of the big problems of correct posture especially during the teen years or people spending most of the working day behind a desk.

‘Wear your true lifestyle’ is a truly sensible, smart clothing concept.

Industrial design student Floor Mattheijssen likes to create systems and services around the human body, the body movements and physiology in medical context.

Her latest design is a monitoring system for unborn children called NEMO, short for ‘non-invasive electro-physiological monitor for obstetrics‘.

NEMO is able to monitor the heart frequency, electrocardiogram of mother and child and the uterine activity. It is an innovative system because it can measure non-invasive when the mother is twenty to forty weeks pregnant.

Usually such monitoring systems have a technical appearance, not very appealing, visually and functionally.

Floor’s mission was to change this by designing a graphical user interface which communicates real-time information about the health condition of the baby and mother and makes it possible to track changes over time.

She looked at current and future technological developments applicable to the electrode belt and found eTextile technologies a good fit for her plan to (r)evolutionize the boring, clunky looking medical device and transform it to a more fashionable, soft and visually appealing accessory for expecting mothers.

Pregnancy is one of the most life transforming event in a girls/woman’s life, full of new experiences and worries. Having the possibility to monitor the fetus with the NEMO system can increase the perception of the health condition by the doctors of the unborn baby, decrease mortality and gives more comfort and peace of mind to the sometimes stressful time during pregnancy.

Floor developed the technology in cooperation with the department of Electrical Engineering at the TU/e and in cooperation with the Maxima Medical Center in Veldhoven.

A remarkable, insightful project in every aspect. Starting out with research for a real, live improving needs and matching them with most suitable (in this case soft, textile based) technologies.

NEMO is part of the ‘Wearable Senses‘ course at the Department of Industrial Design at the Eindhoven University of Technology and on stage during the Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

For many ‘connected’ people, online social activities are sometimes more intensive than the social interaction with family members living in the same house.

To make ‘off-line’ socializing more appealing to the online addicted crowed, Dutch Industrial Design student Paula Kassenaar has a solution to offer called ‘Jakob‘.

‘Jakob’ is a creative addition to the armrest of a sofa. The idea is to form a platform for a wide variety of social and nonsocial interactions: playing games together, leaving messages for one another, teasing each other or reminiscing by finding back sound snippets of memorable moments.

Jakob incorporates basic everyday technology connected through electronic yarn in a clever and innovative way. The main function is recording sound bits, short twitter like messages, for family members who can listen to it when you are not around or feed the sofa with your own personality.

The use of conductive yarns and embedded electronic modules allow bending, twisting, toying around with ‘Jakob’ which blends into the character of sofas seamlessly.

I like concepts like this one (and hopefully one day commercial products) around sofas which are kind of center point in almost everyone’s household. Spicing up sofas with a bit tech for fun or function transforms our good old sofas into a 21st Century interaction tool.

Jakob is currently presented in the Attrackz Lounge at the Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven/The Netherlands.

Doing even simplest forms of exercise like walking is already an effort people in so called highly developed countries have to be motivated to do.

Many spend time in offices and in front of TV or computer in the evenings, make hardly a mile a day.

Stefan Zwegers has a innovative, motivational proposal in from of his wearable electronic concept which is currently exhibited at the Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

His project called ‘Walk!‘ consists of two concepts which he did for the Adidas Innovation Team and some coaching by his professors Stephan Wensveen and Michel Peeters from the Department of Industrial Design at the Eindhoven University of Technology.

Walk! is a shirt developed for women who want an active lifestyle. In the morning a pedometer module is attached to the shirt, which registers the amount of steps that are taken during the day.

The interesting twist: the shirt has circles printed with thermochromic ink which  changes color in sync with changes in temperature.

The change of temperature, triggered by the mileage of the pedometer, draws a line between two circles. The more steps are taken, the more circles will be connected. The wearer has a visual indication of the amount of steps taken just by looking at the shirt.

The second concept uses lighting to provide the feedback. More steps equals more lit flowers.

Stefan build into his motivational fitness shirt the option to turn off the visual indication to avoid being embarrassed when everyone around you would see how lazy you have been again today.

Watch the video below to see the visual effect of the Walk! shirt:

I love this idea, can’t wait until Adidas will bring this to the market – also for men.

Wearable electronic is currently on stage at the Dutch Design Week held between Oct 17 and 25 in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

The wearable electronic concepts are the creation of students participating in the ‘Wearable Senses‘ course at the Department of Industrial Design of the Eindhoven University of Technology.

‘Wearable Senses’ aims to educate Industrial Design students in the area of Wearable Electronics.

We will introduce the students and their concepts on talk2myShirt in a mini series which can be conveniently accessed via our Wearable Senses category.

We begin with the project ‘Flowtime‘ created by Ralph Zoontjens.

‘Flowtime’ is a concept consisting of a jacket and a software application that guides people through yoga postures in a casual way.

The jacket contains fabric stretch and bend sensors and a belt with five vibration motors on the back. A device worn at the front of the belt connects to software with a virtual on-screen yoga trainer that encourages the practitioner to align breath and movement.

Several circles, each one representing one sensor signal, indicate the accuracy of the yoga posture and the more in synchronized, the more they will come together.

In the end, all the circles will flow together into one visual effect. The vibrations will act as tactile guide, so the practitioner is not dependent on the visual and auditory only.

A great concept, reminds me a bit on the balance board of the Wii. Maybe Nintendo can add this to their Wii accessory range?

The cool function of this concept is: it works in a 3 dimensional space unlike a sensor mat which only captures 2 dimensional movements.

Check out the video below and see how ‘Flowtime’ works:

To close with the words of Ralph: “Technology becomes a peripheral signal that recedes into the background of awareness and helps people become one with their body and mind.”