Introduction and living with tech
How many pieces of technology do you carry? As technology has proliferated so has the need to safely transport these devices. A whole industry has sprung up around this issue with cases and bags now available for every gadget from smartphones to tablet PCs.
Says Scott Jordan, the founder of SCOTTeVEST: "The many pockets in SCOTTeVEST clothing keeps people's devices organized – including essential spare batteries – but our pockets also make accessing those devices easier, too.
"When that perfect photo opportunity arises, the coolest camera in the world is useless if it's buried at the bottom of a bag with a dozen other devices and batteries. Pockets let people carry and use their devices more efficiently."
As digital devices have become more portable so has the drive to power them and use them with more convenience. Being able to easily carry a device is a fundamental need today, but how can clothing and other accessories enhance that mobility and use?
Power and control mechanism are the two key foundations here – both of which will be met with increasingly sophisticated bags and cases, but we are already seeing the beginnings of electronics becoming integrated into the clothes we wear as well as the bags and cases we carry.
In the past we have had suits and jackets with built-in iPod controllers. Snowboarders have been able to listen to their favourite tunes for several years thanks to integrated controls. Clothing manufacturers including Levis have experimented with 'iPod Jeans' but many of these experiments were a little ahead of their time and failed to take off.
Living with tech
How wearable technologies will integrate into our daily lives is the subject of a recent piece of research from Mindshare which the firm named SHIFT+. James Chandler, Global Mobile Director at Mindshare, oversees Life+, the company's wearable technology unit, and he commented: "I think the concept of affinity is interesting. Products like the Hug Shirt that allows you to share a virtual hug with someone who isn't there physically, or wearing a t-shirt that might change colour to red inside a football stadium to demonstrate your support for a certain team.
"The evolution in clothing will I'm sure learn lots of lessons from the disruption Apple is having in the watch industry. It might be a non-fashion brand per se that leads the way in connected clothing or smart fabrics."
Rachel Arthur, Senior Editor of Digital Media and Marketing at WGSN, a global foresight business specialising in consumer, fashion and design trends also commented: "What we'll see will be functional inclusions within our garments. This already exists within the sports category, ideal for health and fitness, but it will evolve to be more suited to everyday consumers and the items they choose to wear."
She continued: "To get to that point, what we need to see is a use case that truly appeals to a broader market base. We need something functional yet seamlessly integrated in our lives. Just being able to track your heart rate through the top you wear, or count your steps via your trainers, or know you've received a text message from the vibrations on your necklace or your ring, isn't going to be hugely relevant for the masses in terms of encouraging them to spend more to buy it."
More integration of the mobile technology we all carry is clearly coming in the future. Simply attaching solar panels to jackets, or weaving controls into fabrics won't be enough to make these garments a mass market product. However, as power becomes more plentiful and easier to generate, clothing in general will begin to have electronics and control systems as standard.
Utility clothing will clearly be the area where this convergence will take place initially with innovations such as Glofaster showing the way. And perhaps additions to our clothing such as the Lumo Lift to get us all to improve our posture could eventually disappear into the very fabric of our clothing. We can already buy gloves with built-in Bluetooth to make calls.
Digital fashionistas
Digital fashion can simply be about an easy way to carry your iPhone, but designers are pushing what can be achieved with more esoteric designs. The LED dress from Richard Nicoll is a good example of the experimentation that is going on. There are of course limitations, as the models could only wear the dress for 20 minutes before it became too hot. The work that Cutecircuit has been doing shows how high fashion is using technology.
Designers and technologists are also collaborating to push what is possible with technology and apparel today. The Synapse Dress is a good example. Using the Intel Edison microcontroller, Dutch high-tech fashion designer, Anouk Wipprecht, has created a dress that alters its appearance as the mood of the wearer also changes. And Intimacy 2.0 is a fabric that becomes more transparent the more intimate you become with another person.
To gain an insight into how digital fashion, printed and woven electronics are converging, TechRadar Pro spoke with Kathryn Wills, Smart Textiles Associate at the National Physical Laboratory and Coventry University. We began by posing this question: With the development of conductive fabrics and printed electronics, how do you think clothing for the digital age will evolve?
She replied: "The increasing interest in, and development of, conductive fabrics and printed electronics over the past few years has become clear through visiting wearable technology and smart fabrics shows and seeing what is coming to market.
"The sports and fitness sector is booming, with many examples of sportswear available which will measure your heart rate. This sector is likely to develop in the sense of being able to measure a wider range of physiological properties through your clothing, such as breathing rate and temperature. Garments for medical-level monitoring are not yet as widespread but as this evolves, it will potentially revolutionise health monitoring for patients and clinicians in terms of telehealth services."
Experiments with integrating technology into clothing have come and gone. Why did they fail to take off?
"Manufacturers need to understand exactly how their product will be used and what environment it will be subjected to, for example, if it's in contact with skin will there be irritation issues, or problems with temperature, sweat etc. We need to have a good idea of exactly what we want the product to do and for how long.
"Also I guess people can lose interest; new gadgets need to be able to retain consumer interest and become part of their routine. There is also the fact that integrating this intelligence into numerous garments or products is expensive."
How do you think the advent of 'digital fashion' such as the Synapse Dress will impact on the future development and design of 'gadget clothing'?
"Fashion pieces such as the Synapse Dress are great ways to showcase the merging of electronic engineering with fashion and they increase interest in and awareness of gadget clothing. Hopefully such demonstrations will also stimulate more collaboration between textile manufacturers and the electronics industries, since large-scale development of such projects is at present a hurdle for many people. Suitable apps also need to be developed alongside the gadget clothing to accompany and help interpret the data being acquired."
At the moment wearable means wristbands or watches. Is the future more integration of technology and apparel?
"From the shows we've attended the wristband and watch market is still dominating in the wearables sector; however there is a definite increase in interest in integrating technology and apparel. There tends to be more steps to go through when designing electronics into clothing, such as the connections, which are used on the textile, where does the battery go, how it is responding on the skin etc.
"A central hub such as a watch, which can be linked to the distributed electronics in the sensing clothing will need both energy and intelligence to function. There are also no standards for electronics and clothing technologies at present so it's tricky to benchmark how your garment should be behaving. Therefore the future will be focusing on these issues in order to facilitate better integration of technology and apparel."
And where do you think the next breakthrough in wearable technology will come from?
"The hardware market is becoming established whereas the smart apparel market has yet to take off. I think once the issues mentioned above have been overcome, there will be a lot of interest and uptake in wearable apparel products, with sports apparel leading the way.
"Reliability of the products needs to be demonstrated, in addition to a clear purpose for them. For example if you buy a fitness garment to monitor various physiological attributes during your exercise, what will you do with this data when you have it?"
A wearable future
Wearable technology that disappears into our clothing is certainly coming. As wearable technologies began in the fitness sector, so digital apparel will also begin here. Already Athos Smart Clothing, OmSignal and Sensoria are showing what is possible today.
SCOTTeVEST's Scott Jordan said: "I think clothing will start to extend the capabilities of our mobile devices with pockets for power generation and management, more powerful antennas integrated into hardware on the clothing (like zippers) and other features that allow people to be more comfortable even while mobile."
Mindshare's James Chandler concluded: "Lots of predictions point to wearables hardware becoming invisible, so it's possible that once it becomes even more discreet than a wristband or watch there will be breakthroughs in apparel. In the short to mid-term though, expect more innovation in the hardware itself. The Apple Watch is just getting started, and in 12 months' time we'll be comparing the one we wear today to the first iPad. There's still a long way to go with versions two, three and four."
And Dr Karinna Nobbs, Programme Director and Senior Lecturer Digital Fashion Strategy, GCU London, summed up for TechRadar Pro how we might all be wearing our tech soon: "The future is definitely about the seamless integration of the tech and fashion/apparel, however there is a cost implication to that and also a risk associated with it. At the moment jewellery and watches from Kovert for instance are a lower risk and lower price (not in all instances) plus consumers may want to remove the device so as not to be constantly connected."
How we carry our technology continues to evolve, as mobile devices themselves change. It's when our devices disappear into our clothing that a change occurs in our relationship to the technologies we use. Wearing your tech could mean something very different in the future.
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from www.techradar.com
