Designer KtY was invited as a guest lecturer at Stanford Arts Industry Immersion class. Course artsinst 197B is focused on Fashion, aiming to give students opportunities to immerse themselves in the expanding and evolving fashion industry. The course is six weeks long with influential industry professionals giving lectures and workshops.
KtY was the final lecturer of the semester, on Feb 28th, 2020, summarizing pain points in the fashion industry, solutions to reduce waste and pollution in production, and methods to embed technologies into textiles for functional garments. Students were excited by the possibilities in fashion innovation, asked meaningful questions and enjoyed the hands-on introduction to smart textiles and soft circuits.
Using LEDs from Cibitronics, LilyPad microcontrollers from SparkFun and conductive tapes from Brown Dog Gadgets Crazy Circuits, students were instructed to construct an easy circuit on clothing items they brought to decorate using their creativity.
Students came from many different backgrounds and their level of education ranged from undergraduate to PhD. It is their first time building wearable circuits.
The microcontrollers were pre-programmed to randomly turn on output power at different pins. With LEDs attached to each pin, they would randomly blink. This is a good first introduction to constructing a wearable. Once students have this concept of building physical circuits, they will be able to dive deeper with more complex functionality and programming.
Thanks to Stanford Arts Director of Programs Ellen Oh for the invitation.