Abstract
Smart textiles are becoming more integrated with service ecosystems that go beyond the current horizontal textile value chain. This will extend the material and tangible properties of smart textiles to intangible properties from services, such as the ability to measure and store data and change the functionality of a material over time. It is thus becoming more urgent for textile developers and service providers to work closer together to develop these types of smart textile services (STSs). This opens up a vast field of opportunities for textile developers, product designers, and service designers to combine their disciplines to develop close-to-the-body applications in the area of well-being. The role of the body, the degree of personalisation, and the prototyping process provide opportunities for ultra-personalisation within these new types of embodied STSs. We present an overview of commercially available STSs based on these three elements. We then analyse three STSs that we have developed in the context of well-being. We advocate that within the exemplified STSs the service interface is strongly connected to the bodily senses of the people using the service. This connection is further specified with three notions of ultra-personalisation: personalisation through the material properties, the design of the garment, and the programming of the interactions with the wearer.
Martijn ten Bhömer
Co-founder & CTO
Specialized in the design, research and development of intelligent products.