A group of Georgia Tech students and researchers recently presented its findings on access and “gropability” of garments at the International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC), part of the ARS Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. The group also showcased a new electronic textile swatchbook that documents current manufacturing techniques for futuristic fashion that combines traditional and non-traditional materials.

The team’s platform, “Is it Gropable?,” asserts that a person has limited visual attention in a mobile environment, and garment interfaces should be “gropable,” or accessible with little to no visual attention. The lecture was based on the findings of an experiment in which the group compared stationary and mobile input on two embroidered textile interfaces; a single touch three button interface; and a multi-touch, four button interface activated by pressing two buttons at the same time. Sixteen participants completed 480 trials while walking a path and sitting.

The multi-disciplinary team was led by Zeagler and Thad Starner, who cross-teach the wearable electronics elective course between the Colleges of Architecture and Computing. Nicholas Komor (BS ID 2009) sparked the original discussion while a student in the wearable electronics course last fall. Komor entered the London College of Fashion this fall, with a concentration on Digital Fashion. Others involved were computing graduate students James Clawson (Human-Centered Computing) and Scott Gilliland (Computer Science), and alumni Manish Bhardwaj (MS ECE 2008) and Mayank Garg (MS CS 2009).

ISWC'09 brought together researchers, product vendors, fashion designers, textile manufacturers, users and related professionals to share information and advances in wearable computing, stimulating a dialog at the interface of art, technology and society. Learn more at the ISWC'09 Web site.