The MIT ( Massachusetts Institute of Technology ) Design Innovation workshop 2015 was a rigorous seven day workshop, aimed at bridging the gap between engineers, programmers and designers on the path of innovation. I was a part of the " smart textiles track " where I worked with a team consisting of engineers, programmers and textiles industry professionals and developed “Kaleen - a rug with a story”.
As a designer, I had to first understand the limitations and opportunities of the technology available, implementation processes, time constraint and industry outlook towards the product. With the idea of coming up with an innovative fabric based sensor, I had to plan the child's experience on the story telling rug.
We first got comfortable with the technology by experimenting with conductive ink made circuits, optical fibers and aurdino programming. Along with this, we were exposed to some of the existing analogous inspirations like heat sensitive inks, glow in the dark fabrics,etc. We also visited a Jardosi art practitioner as the art form involves making connective intricate patterns with metal wires which can be of great use for any artistic or smart electrical conduction when required.
We developed a rug for one-two years old kids who generally crawl. "Kaleem" responds through light and sound to every action the kid performs on the rug. With this rug, we wanted to improve the kid's reflexes as well as induce a sense of direction and pressure into the kid with the help of fabric based sensors, conductive ink and thread, copper tapes and foam which are all soft and thus cannot hurt the baby in any way.
The aurdino controls all the light related responses and supports the mp3 chip which takes care of the sound responses. For the bush sensor to work, copper tape is applied at the back of the rug which is attached to the grey colored stitched conductive thread for better contact with the circuit on the bottom layer.
On the seventh day of the workshop,there was an exhibition of our work where we had an experience of pitching our idea to people from different backgrounds and students from the other tracks which gave us a lot of insights on further development of the concept.
