Crafting Electronic Textiles as a Participatory Design Material for Slowing Down

To counteract the fast-paced and efficiency-driven nature of technological development, Slow Technology philosophy calls for designing technology for reflection and mental rest. However, its focus lies mainly on interaction with artifacts on the user side. There is a lack of understanding of how applying this philosophy can influence designers and shape design processes. The goal of my PhD is to investigate notions of slowing down within participatory design processes through the lens of handcrafting with e-textiles, to uncover alternative design strategies for envisioning future technologies. To achieve this, I will probe slowing-down properties of crafts like state of flow, rhythm, and repetitiveness that have a peaceful and relaxing effect. I will apply these qualities to participatory design processes, allowing time for creativity, reflection, and diverse paths of participation. My findings will provide an understanding of how temporal affordances of e-textiles can shape PD processes, and offer strategies to facilitate and document slow design processes.


INTRODUCTION
In the last two decades, there has been a call for slowing down in the field of HCI, with the Slow Technology philosophy as one of the most prominent examples, which argues for a "design agenda for technology aimed at reflection and moments of mental rest rather than efficiency in performance" [15].Aligning my work with these goals, I aim to extend the slow technology principles from design artifacts and interaction to studying design processes.To approach this, I will draw upon Tim Ingold's concept of correspondence [16] between the designer, the flow of materials, and other non-human agents, and turn to electronic textiles as a design material that combines both crafting and computation, bridging soft and hard intellectual styles [1].Taking this as a reference point, I aim to explore the various notions of temporal affordances of e-textiles within design processes, and contribute to the general understanding of design materials from a temporal lens.Furthermore, I will examine how to re-interpret Ingold's concept of correspondence considering the rise of AI-supported creativity tools and how they affect the temporal aspects of design processes.I will explore tensions between the inherently slow, rhythmic, procedural and embodied human-material interaction within craft-based design processes on the one hand, and the fast-paced interaction with generative AI that accelerates creative processes on the other.
My angle on studying design processes through the lens of tangible and embodied interaction between the material of e-textiles and designer, with a focus on process-oriented crafting, feeds directly into the research of the TEI community.Embracing slow design processes for reflective imaginaries of future technologies complements this year's TEI theme "On the Edge" by challenging the narrative of efficiency and productivity in designing technologies.

CONTEXT AND MOTIVATION
Apart from being an HCI researcher, my personal background lies in e-textiles and education.I have been exploring the procedural nature of crafting with e-textiles by teaching these skills in different contexts for the past decade, and observed how they can be used as a tool for opening up to different modes of participation, computational literacy, and empowerment.Rather than ready-made e-textile artifacts, and interaction with those, I am primarily interested in the crafting processes and their ability to impose their own rhythm and a different sense of time.My aim is to find out what effects these temporal qualities have on designers, and how this knowledge can contribute to conceptualising PD processes when working with children.Children are exposed to overwhelmingly fast-paced interaction with technology in the daily lives, and could benefit from spaces for contemplation and mental rest.Tackling this seems to be especially important in overcrowded school environments.In the context of my research, I will adhere to the values and methods of participatory design.I will engage with diverse groups of school children, teachers, and families in public settings like schools, universities, and museums, to democratize access to the processes of speculating about future technologies.

Materials in Design Processes
The "material turn" and nuanced understanding of computational materials is rather young in the field of HCI, and has been gaining weight over the last decade [4,7,21,22].In an attempt to conceptualize the relationship between materials and designer, [10] argue, that we "should also acknowledge the active role of materials in shaping our ways of doing.",while other scholars use the term "affordances" [11] or "agency" [20] to describe properties specific to the respective material.I will build upon Tim Ingold's fluid and improvisational view on the process of "thinking through making", in which makers, materials, and other non-human agents like tools and context influence design process and outcome.

Slowing Down: Temporality in Design Processes
In their review of time in HCI, Wiberg and Stolterman [23] call for development of a more precise vocabulary to grasp temporality as a design material, and state an increased interest in studying the flow of interaction, pace, and rhythm in the HCI community.
Adding to this discussion, Falk and colleagues [5] urge researchers and designers to consider the temporality of design processes to "achieve desired access, creativity, and types of design thinking".They argue that short-term and long-term design processes configure different modes of participation in design and call for a deeper exploration of pace as a shaping temporal aspect of participation and creativity in design processes.
A growing strand of research is dedicated to investigating how the change in temporality affects interaction and experience, particularly focusing on slowing down.An extensive body of work around the Slow Interaction Design Movement [8,9,14,17,18] aims to counteract the fast-paced and often efficiency-driven nature of technological development.While I draw upon ideas and concepts in this area of research, my focus lies in investigating the temporalities of materials in design processes.

Designing with Handcrafted E-Textiles
One of the craft's characteristic aspects is the ability to generate a flow state, as described by psychologist Csikszentmihaly [3], a state in which a craftsperson or designer is entirely immersed -a genuinely satisfying experience.Goveia da Rocha and Andersen [13] describe it as "the experience of creative drifting" -a sense of losing yourself in the making while traveling with the material.Craft's ability to slow down designers [1,2,12] are at the base of my conceptualization of slow design processes.
Electronic textiles is a hybrid material and encompasses both the qualities of crafts and a computational material suitable for designing future technologies, and allowing to study temporal qualities of design material.In their seminal work "Crafting Technology: Reimagining the processes, materials and cultures of electronics" Buechley and Perner-Wilson [1] compare design experiences reported by crafters and by electronic tinkerers, and point out that the latter group does not describe their process as meditative, peaceful, or soothing.Following this thought, Buechley and Perner-Wilson question whether we can "find ways of working with electronics that involve meditative physical activities and opportunities for aesthetic expression?" and if so, "could the activity attract a more diverse group of participants?"However, they do not address this question explicitly and do not contextualize it with a temporal lens.
To date, there is no shared vocabulary to speak about the temporal qualities of design materials.In my PhD, I will build upon Rosner's concept of temporality of material practices, in which she urges to attend to the temporal affordances of materials [19].Rosner suggests to "think about temporal patterning of work, and how our materials help to configure their unfolding rhythms".Using a craft-inspired angle on design materials and processes, my goal is to generate knowledge on how temporal properties of handcrafted e-textiles shape participatory design processes.I will use this lens to develop recommendations for time-sensitive materials in design processes.These findings will contribute to Rosner's notion of temporality of material practices, and general understanding of design materials in design processes.

RESEARCH QUESTION
Given the understanding of temporal lens on design materials from the different angles and contexts described in the previous section, I will address the following research questions: • Main RQ: How can handcrafting with e-textiles support the notion of slowing down within PD processes of design futuring?• RQ1: What is the current understanding of the temporal affordances of craft materials used during design processes?What affordances are characteristic of handcrafted e-textiles?• RQ2: How can a better understanding of temporal properties of e-textiles inform and enrich modes of participation in PD processes?• RQ3: Handcrafts & AI: how can we maintain embodied thinking with and through craft material, while collaborating with AI in the context of PD processes?• RQ4: How can temporal affordances of handcrafting with e-textiles be appropriated and facilitated to encourage timeoriented use of materials in PD processes?

RESEARCH ACTIVITIES
To address the above research questions, I am conducting research activities that include a literature review and a set of case studies (ongoing and planned).These activities will inform reflections and recommendations that aim to contribute to communities of HCI researchers and e-textile educators.

Literature Review
To build a theoretical framework for my thesis as a foundation for positioning my research and empirical work and address my RQ1, I will critically review existing literature to conceptualize temporal qualities of materials in design processes in HCI.I will conduct a scoping review, using the following guiding questions: • How is the connection between design materials and temporality established and described when studying design processes?• In which contexts are materials in participatory design processes being studied?

Case Studies
To build a platform for developing an in-depth understanding of the temporal affordances of design materials in PD processes, I will draw upon a set of case studies that probe different material properties, design strategies, and modes of participation.These case studies will comprise of PD workshops with design activities, interviews, observations, speculative design elements, and autoethnographic methods.As my lens, I will use the case of handcrafted e-textiles.
In my Pilot Study conducted during the residency at Paillard Centre d'Art Contemporain, I explored sketching with e-textiles as an investigation of modes of material temporalities.I conducted interviews with experts and used auto-ethnographic methods to trace how an e-textile project emerges in correspondences with the material.The study resulted in a freehand machine-sewn research artifact (see figure 3), making which I "sketched" with yarns and incorporated soft capacitive sensors connected to the interviews.The study helped me to frame my research focus and tighten my topic.
To address my RQ2 I have designed and conducted studies, seeking to understand temporal affordances of e-textiles in PD processes, and probing them for different pathways of participation.In this context, I have conducted six workshops exploring the tension between Making "fast" materials "slow", and "slow" materials "fast".The workshops were set in three different contexts: two with 11-13 year old children at a middle school in Salzburg, AU, three with families in a public art museum in Munich, GER, and one with general public at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, AU (see figure 4 , A).
The second part of these research activities probes time-sensitive e-textile handcrafting methods for different pathways of participation.By using a low entry-point yarn materials and techniques and applying finger-knitting for making e-textiles sensors in a workshop at school, I investigated how this approach might allow for diverse pathways of participation for diverse groups of children.(see figure4 , B).The data still needs to be analysed, but preliminary results suggest that these techniques allow for richer modes of engaging neurodiverse or otherwise unmotivated children, and support self-expression and confidence in students.
Future Work: Building on this initial research, I will design subsequent studies, to explore the topic of Handcrafting with AI to address my RQ3 and probe collaborative PD methods with AI.The aim of this study will be to explore the tension space between an embodied and situated craftmen's experience with text-based interactions with generative AI.I will examine how these materials influence participatory design processes with regard to imagining futures with emergent technologies.
The final activity will address the RQ4 and explore how to document, communicate & teach slow design processes.To achieve this, I will engage craft teachers and e-textile educators to understand the needs to provide the knowledge and infrastructure required for facilitation.

Reflections and Recommendations
As the final step of my research, I will combine knowledge gained from the literature review and empirical work to build a methodological base for informing slow design practices and their implementation in PD processes.This will result in a set of synthesized reflections and recommendations for designing with temporal affordances of materials.
To contribute to the e-textile community, I will extend the traditional e-textile swatch book format of tangible knowledge exchange by developing a process-centered swatch book.It will serve as a means of communicating the materiality of design processes, rather than the one of finished artifacts or samples.I will also develop a pedagogical toolkit for facilitating slow design processes, aimed at contributing to the community of educators.

TIMELINE
I am currently in the beginning of the second year of my PhD studies at the University of Salzburg in Austria.I am also working on a three-year research project as a research assistant, which is currently entering its last year.In the scope of this research we collaborate with a middle-school in Salzburg, and have already conducted 22 participatory design workshops with four classes and collected data for my first studies.I am also attending PhD seminars and have recently passed my disposition -a qualification exam after the first year of studies.I have co-authored a research project paper published at CHI 2023 [6], and I am currently conducting a literature review on design materials and temporality.
After conducting my initial empirical inquiries and first studies, I am currently at the point of my PhD where I am starting to build a theoretical framework of my research, and several important questions remain open.In particular, I would like to discuss questions regarding data analysis, evaluation, and further studies design.For example, what methods are suitable for tying together the influence of design materials on design processes, when it comes to data collection and analysis?How can we study temporal aspects of design materials, and is it possible to isolate them from other properties of design materials?Through the TEI Graduate Student Consortium I hope to receive feedback that will help me to sharpen my hypothesis and plan the design of my future studies.Furthermore, I am keen to connect to the TEI community and learn from my peers, as well as share my research into process-oriented e-textiles.

CONTRIBUTIONS
My work will contribute to the field of Human-Computer Interaction on several levels: 1) Theoretical: expand the understanding of how materials shape design processes and outcomes, as well as generate new knowledge about the effects of hybrid craft materials of e-textiles on designers and participatory design processes.Contribute to the Slow Technology philosophy by including the study of design processes.
2) Empirical: elaborate on time-sensitive properties of handcrafting with e-textiles in participatory design processes; this will take on the form of case studies, in which I will probe different strategies, tools, materials, and techniques; reflect on design processes with participants and the researcher.
3) Methodological: outline considerations and reflections on designing with temporal affordances of materials in participatory design, which will result in the development of a toolkit with synthesized recommendations for time-sensitive use of design materials, along with a process-centered swatch book as research outputs.

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: A Venn-diagram of the theoretical pillars of my thesis

Figure 2 :
Figure 2: Mapping of the research activities to the theoretical pillars

Figure 3 :
Figure 3: Unwinding Textiles: a research artifact that explores thinking through and with the temporal qualities of the etextile material.Free-hand machine sewing on cotton, conductive yarns and fabric, BareConductive Touchboard.Exhibited at Ars Electronica Festival 2023.

Figure 4 :
Figure 4: PD Workshops conducted in the scope of the first study.A: modular e-textile breakout boards for a rapid prototyping workshop at school, and rapid prototyping with copper tape at Ars Electronica Festival 2023.B: Finger-knitting and crowd-knitting techniques explored in workshops.