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Designing Interactive Clothing to Raise Awareness of and Comfort the Wearer Suffering from Anxiety

Published: 06 July 2020 Publication History

Abstract

Anxiety is a mental disorder that many adults may experience during their life. With this subject come many prejudices and even discrimination of those suffering, and the stigma on the topic is still very much present. This work describes the design of the interactive clothing, namely "ECHO;''aimed to comfort those suffering from anxiety, raise awareness of it, and deal with it privately and subtly. We designed three interactive garments stimulating the different senses that can help with grounding when experiencing anxiety, including a jacket that starts the conversation on anxiety, a sweater that comforts the wearer, and jeans that help to analyze their fidgeting behavior. By adding another layer of interactivity in clothing, this work reflects one of many possibilities for designers to find the balance between breaking the stigma on and preserving the vulnerability of suffering from mental illnesses in design.

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Cited By

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  • (2024)E-textiles for emotion interaction: a scoping review of trends and opportunitiesPersonal and Ubiquitous Computing10.1007/s00779-024-01793-w28:3-4(549-577)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2024
  • (2023)Wearables for Stress Management: A Scoping ReviewHealthcare10.3390/healthcare1117236911:17(2369)Online publication date: 22-Aug-2023
  • (2023)What Not to Wear: Exploring Taboos in Clothing Through Speculative DesignProceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3563657.3595972(1-14)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2023

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  1. Designing Interactive Clothing to Raise Awareness of and Comfort the Wearer Suffering from Anxiety

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      DIS' 20 Companion: Companion Publication of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference
      July 2020
      605 pages
      ISBN:9781450379878
      DOI:10.1145/3393914
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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      Published: 06 July 2020

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      1. anxiety
      2. awareness
      3. comfort
      4. interactive clothing

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      July 6 - 10, 2020
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      View all
      • (2024)E-textiles for emotion interaction: a scoping review of trends and opportunitiesPersonal and Ubiquitous Computing10.1007/s00779-024-01793-w28:3-4(549-577)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2024
      • (2023)Wearables for Stress Management: A Scoping ReviewHealthcare10.3390/healthcare1117236911:17(2369)Online publication date: 22-Aug-2023
      • (2023)What Not to Wear: Exploring Taboos in Clothing Through Speculative DesignProceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3563657.3595972(1-14)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2023

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