Motivation

Nowadays, people are distant from one another in the public space. They do not talk to each other, and avoid physical interaction. Lots of people prefer virtual sociality to face-to-face interaction. They try to hide behind computers and use social communicative tools to contact each other. Even in university or college, classmates do not talk to each other or show their personal concerns to others. To change the uncomfortable feelings of face-to-face communication, people need a social facilitator to help their interaction.

Lots of people do not truly understand themselves which includes their emotions, interests, needs and desires. This affects their self presentation in the social communication. Self presentation is one of the important aspects in building and deepening relationships with others. Through monitoring the reactions and comparing the differences from those of others during social communications, human learns about self. Without gestures, tone of voice, facial expression, body orientation, and other nonverbal signals, people have problems with understanding self and others.

Clothing is static and boring without poetic interaction to the human body. It is a daily need and the most intimate thing to the human body. Clothes have direct interaction with our skin and they can affect the internal parameters of the body, such as the heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature. People choose different styles and colour clothes to present their characteristics and emotion. However, the shape, pattern, or colour of typical clothing does not react on the changing movement or mood of the wearer. It is important to achieve human desires for daily life.

Most electronic fashion is heavy in weight because of the power support. This issue is one of the most important aspects of wearable computing, which directly influences the effectiveness and wearability of the devices or clothing. The existing kinetic fashion design is achieved by the memory alloys, air inflation and mechanism. The memory alloy and air inflation needs a higher power support and because of the weight, electronic clothing limits daily body movements of wearer.

Significance

This research may help other electronic fashion designers who want to build a better kinetic dress. They can learn different technologies by the use of current electronic fashion design during their investigation on background studies.

Also, this may help designers who want to employ a low cost and low powered mechanical kinetic system in their designs. They can understand the advantages and disadvantages between different kinds of mechanical kinetic systems through the experimentations of evaluating these systems in the implementation process.

The research may help the psychologists to understand the emotion of their patients, and let doctors monitor patient's heart rate by reading the changes of the dress. Also the anthropologist may know more about how electronic clothing changes human behaviours which includes both the wearer and her onlookers.