In January 2007 I flew out to Australia to spend 3 weeks participating in the Reskin Lab. I was joined by 19 other designers and seven facilitators from around the world.  The aim was to examine and reflect on the futuristic vision that all design artefacts will be ’smart’, will ‘think’, and will ‘communicate’ with one another.

 
How will this enrich or change our lives? How much technology do we want in our physical world? How much embedded electronics can we digest before facing the environmental consequences?

In workshops we explore electronics as a medium, looking at the integration of electronics and new materials into traditional craft practices and design artefacts. We experimented with materials that enable simple expressive computational forms, with a particular (but not exclusive) emphasis on textiles.

A series of lectures explored previous works and present a theoretical and historical overview of relevant thematic areas including:

physical interaction design
physical computing
ubiquitous computing
tangible media
wearable computing
technical textile history
electronic textiles
embedded electronics
sensor integration
responsive environments
design research concepts

These included:

-Basic electronics and building simple circuits on breadboards
-Basic microcontroller programming and working with various sensors and actuators
-Screen based programming in c++, java or a sketch-program tool like Processing
-Garment design and basic pattern drafting
-Basic textile construction techniques, such as weaving, stitching, embroidery, and knitting
-Jacquard weaving and software for complex woven structures
-Alternative ways of thinking about electronics: eg, what happens when a circuit becomes ’soft’, when we use conductive thread instead of a breadboard or PCB,

 -Basic electronic textiles: sewing a prototype of electronic textile soft switch and exploring other conductive materials
-Overview of different conductive threads and textiles, their history and construction methods
-Soft’ electronics: different conductive threads, inks, and integration techniques. How to connect ‘hard’ to ’soft’, how to use traditional textile construction techniques such as beading or appliqué to construct our ’soft’ circuits.Wearable technologies and hands-on techniques with LEDs, conductive embroidery or textiles, electroluminescent ink printing. Working methods and processes derived from sound, video, sensor activation, database design, projection, jewellery making and metal work practices.