As designers, we often use annotations to add information and reflection to our work. We would like to suggest that these annotations let personal design languages emerge. We experiment with the materiality of the pictorial format itself to show how such languages emerge from a particular body of work, as it travels from sketches, text, and various material artefacts. This emergent language uses annotations and layers as design materials, providing access to the nuances in the thinking behind our research and making processes. Through this language, the voice of the maker emerges revealing subjective and situated knowledges that would not be available otherwise. We reflect on these insights and share a set of strategies using annotations and layerings for others to use. As a result, we contribute an approach of annotations and layering to engage complexity when making, reflecting, and disseminating design research.

3D printing generally makes use of CAD software and slicers to mediate designerly intentions and fabrication instructions to the machine. This can obstruct the making process to such a degree that the designer risks becoming an observer of an ongoing print. To trouble this situation, we devised a manual control that enables the designer to manipulate one of the axes of the 3D printer. Through this embodied process, the incoming toolpath becomes another material to be extruded together with the 3D printing filament. The negotiations of (im)precision and intent between designer and machine are recorded and can be used as input for a new beginning. In this pictorial, we share our annotated 3D prints as a way of highlighting and paying attention to the relations between code, material, machine, and designer. We contribute with the system and reflections on embodied fabrication.

Fashion design has rapidly become a digital process where textiles are simulated as soft, conformable materials on a digital body. The embodied experience and physical interaction with the textile have been replaced by screen-based media, resulting in a gap in understanding between physical and digital textile material. Consequently, understanding digitized textile properties and characteristics has become challenging for practitioners. This research investigates fashion designers’ implicit understanding when selecting textiles, specifically how interactions with physical textiles influence design considerations. Twenty digital fashion designers interacted with ten physical textile materials via tangible and scientific drape measurements, reflecting upon their design considerations. In digital environments, a tangible understanding of material properties is vital, and scientific drape measurements add significant understanding to digital design. The research advances our understanding of integrating digital tools in textile and soft material practices, where a postphenomenological approach is employed to help formulate the design considerations in selecting materials.

Digital Craftsmanship, and other explorative design research practices using digital fabrication, depend on sample making and material exploration. Rather than describing a method of making use of the information present in samples co-inhabiting a timeline, this pictorial reports on the loose ends that may emerge out of the main journey, when taking a traveler's approach to making. By loose ends, we mean successful samples that are not suitable to the main inquiry of the present design research process, but that under certain circumstances can become starting points for new investigation lines. We describe four examples of such loose ends and introduce the concept of fellow travelers as a metaphor for describing the process of co-inhabiting a timeline and a journey while ultimately having diverging goals and outcomes.

Digital fabrication machines enable the creation of a wide range of artifacts and materials. In the process of exploring the possibilities within these digital modes of creation, many samples are made. To encourage cross-pollination between different practices and strive for a community that shares more information, this research investigates the state of the art of sample making and documentation practices in the context of Digital Craftsmanship. Through in-depth interviews with designers with a focus on digital craftsmanship, in this paper we unpack some of the practices and challenges in material driven processes related to how to design, evaluate, document and archive material samples. We reflect on making practices, what forms of knowledge are produced through making and how the use of samples in different design processes can be supported through documentation.

Digital fabrication and craftsmanship is entering into a new phase with increasing levels of complexity and a renewed desire for composites and cross-material experimentation. However, allowing work to travel from machine to machine, remains a challenge in terms of workflow, communication, orientation and material. Based on an exploration to combine embroidery and 3D printing in the pursuit of inflatable solutions, we propose the metaphor of the drawing game Exquisite Corpse to outline the three emerging concerns: turn taking, orientation and trade-offs. We propose a set of guidelines that suggest ways in which, we may allow different digital fabrication machines to be used in sequence, as a method for adding complexity to the things we make and the ways our machines may talk to one another.

Mechanical pushbuttons, which provide physical landmarks and clear tactile feedback, are easily accessible and highly reliable in eyes-free use. Potentially, their merits can improve the experiences of on-body or wearable HCI. However, they are not commonly adopted as a user interface of smart textiles because the physical mechanism of conventional pushbutton hardware requires further integration, which should be seamless enough to be comfortably worn. In this pictorial, we present a design exploration of the methodologies for interweaving mechanical pushbuttons into fabrics. The exploration used a frame system, which unifies the workflow of digital embroidery and 3D printing and enables the exploration of the physical design. Through the process, we investigated methods of integration and fabrication through making and presented our findings with proof-of-concept implementations. We also discussed the alternative designs and interaction methods as well as their implications to enlighten future research directions and opportunities.

Wearables combine practical and conceptual challenges related to electronics, clothing and interaction design. Research through design in this area is commonly done iteratively through prototypes of increasing levels of fidelity, often relying on manual fabrication. However, manual fabrication presents challenges when comparing prototypes due to their varying levels of realization and the inaccuracy of reproductions. We discuss how using digital machine embroidery, combined with chemical embroidery technique, supports fabricating consistent high-fidelity prototypes for soft wearables in the form of research products. Our approach involves creating the textile substrate together with integrating and embedding electronic components through a unified process whilst keeping high control over alterations between prototypes. We illustrate this approach through the design process of the Smart Sock, a sensorized sock for rehabilitation. We detail the challenges behind our process and reflect on the opportunities emerging from using digital machine and chemical embroidery techniques combined to craft research products.

Wearable and e-textiles as a field has tended to overlook its own documentation, as notions and overarching ideas are developed over time and across individual projects. We would like to begin addressing this by charting the development of Digital Craftsmanship through a number of projects over time. Practically, we propose to show a small selection of garments and samples alongside a simple framework for future documentation of work.

In this paper, we show the development of the Ideating in Skills (IiS) toolset: an embodied design tool aimed at supporting co-design processes. The iterative process of developing the toolset was carried out by students. They worked individually at first, exploring their own skills and moods through movement, visualisations and poetry. These explorations were translated into objects that were able to communicate and connect with each other. In each iteration, the design of the qualities of these connections was based on the findings of the previous explorations. After several individual and team-based iterations, a final toolset was collaboratively created and evaluated in various short design sessions. Based on the potential of the first version of the toolset, a second version was created that is currently used and tested in one-on-one settings all over the world and in multi-stakeholder settings in a creative hub in Sweden.