Fashion is primarily a visual ontology consisting of definitions, theory, and methods that are based on visual language. The workshop Sensoaesthetics: Introducing alternative embodied material expressions in textile and fashion is a part of a three-year research project, Sonic Fashion (funded by the Swedish Research Council, 2022-2024). The project aims to expand the discourse of fashion by approaching it from a new and very different—sonic—perspective wherein sound is considered not as a negative aspect, but as a potential source of a new theory and facilitator of the evolution of new methods. The proposed workshop aims to (i) introduce participants to experimental inclusive aesthetics and (ii) expand the vocabularies of material definition - analyzing and defining them by using five experiential levels: functional, sensorial, interpretive, affective and performative. The workshop invites participants from a whole host of design fields and people with a visual impairment to co-create together within sensitizing exercises and sonic design prototyping to develop more inclusive ways of designing, defining, and representing textile and fashion artifacts.

There are many design techniques to support the co-design of tangible technologies. However, few of these design methods allow the involvement of users at scale and across diverse geographic locations. While popular in psychology, the story completion method (SCM) has only recently started to be adopted within the HCI community. We explore whether SCM can generate meaningful design insights from large, diverse study populations for the design of Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs). Based on the results of two questionnaire studies using SCM, we conclude that the method can be used to generate meaningful design insights. Drawing on a systematic review of 870 TUI papers, we then contextualise the strengths and weaknesses of SCM against commonly used design methods, before reflecting on our experience of using the method across two distinct domains. We discuss the advantages of the method (particularly in terms of the scale and diversity of participation) and the challenges (particularly around constructing meaningful story stems, and developing the correct level of scaffolding to support creativity). We conclude that SCM is particularly suitable to be used in the early stages of the design process to understand the socio-cultural context of deployment.

We describe our experience of working with blind and visually impaired people to create interactive art objects that are personal to them, through a participatory making process using electronic textiles (e-textiles) and hands-on crafting techniques. The research addresses both the practical considerations about how to structure hands-on making workshops in a way which is accessible to participants of varying experience and abilities, and how effective the approach was in enabling participants to tell their own stories and feel in control of the design and making process. The results of our analysis is the offering of insights in how to run e-textile making sessions in such a way for them to be more accessible and inclusive to a wider community of participants.

The traditional approach for developing assistive technologies for blind and visually impaired users is to focus on problems and to try and resolve them by compensating for the loss of vision. In this research we took the approach of involving blind and visually impaired people, from a range of ages, in a hands-on making activity using an eTextile physical computing toolkit. Our aim was to create an environment where people could both make and learn form each other, but also where they would share their thoughts and imagine future scenarios for the technologies they were developing. We observed highly creative ways of working at all levels, from unique weaving techniques to choices in fabrics and materials, as well as expressions of personal preferences. We discuss the "in-home enjoyment" scenarios sketched by the participants and point to the role of creative workshops and eTextile toolkits as a tool for imagining future technologies.