JacquardToolkit: enabling and exploring interactions with the Levi's jacquard jacket

New user interfaces afford innovations in the user experience of computers- the interactive textile approach posed by Jacquard is another step in this evolution[1, 5]. Although it demonstrates four gestures via the Levi's Jacquard Jacket [4], we experiment with potential applications to explore new forms of user inputs. We have built a toolkit that enables developers full access to the Jacquard technology and custom gesture creation [2, 3]. We subsequently used this to develop a custom Force Touch gesture, which is now integrated into the aforementioned iOS toolkit such that developers may use it to implement original and new jacket functionality into their own applications. The playground application helps developers understand how to effectively utilize the library. In parallel, we evaluated the Jacquard hardware by conducting a detailed tear down of the Jacket cuff and tag. We mapped how such sensing technology can be removed from the jacket and applied to other textiles with conductive threads. Moreover, our findings motivate future testing on other garments and accessories as we isolated the Jacquard swatch from the cuff. In order to evaluate the intuitiveness of the jacket gestures and test learnability of the new custom gestures, we designed a user assessment application with the toolkit to conduct a user study with 25 subjects. Results showed that both Brush In and Brush Out had the easiest learning curve and were perceived as most intuitive. Brush In (48%) stood out as the most preferred gesture followed by Double Tap (20%). Although the custom gesture, Force Touch, had the lowest perceived intuitiveness, it serves as the first key step towards a future of rapidly prototyped and consumer-ready custom gestures.