Before making this work, I first thought about what aspects of wearable controllers I wanted to utilize in my design.

          The first is that users will inevitably come into contact with their own bodies when operating wearable controllers. When wearable controllers are located on various parts of the body, users will naturally develop various gestures when using these controllers.

          Second is the personal uniqueness of wearable controllers. Since they need to be worn on the body, it can be said that they are personalized, and depending on each player, new possibilities may arise or adjustments may need to be made.

          Lastly the lightness of the wearable controller, it can be made thin enough, thin enough to be combined with the fabric of the clothing, without burdening the player with weight or the feeling that they are carrying some kind of device on their back.

          At the same time, I would like to use this work as a study in my research of “using real-world materials to help players strengthen their personal perception and self-identity while playing in the digital world, to feel their uniqueness, and not to be disturbed by the increasingly large and chaotic information in the digital world”. With the help of the following three references, I set the design concept of this wearable controller as follows: I hope that through the controller, which is a bridge connecting the physical world and the digital world, the players can realize their own significance in the process of interaction by feeling their own muscle activity and body temperature, and that the players themselves are the initiators of all interactions, the listeners, and the musicians. Therefore, I wanted to position the keys in such a way as to encourage the user to embrace themselves. I needed to place two buttons on the left shoulder and two on the right waist. The controller buttons are shaped like the keys of an electric piano. The buttons need to be thin and light enough so that the player can feel their body muscles moving underneath the buttons. The board and batteries, which are the heart of the controller, will be located near the player’s heart.

Reference 1: Czerwonka, Sara, et al. “One Ring Fit to Rule Them All? An Analysis of Avatar Bodies and Customization in Exergames. ” 

          In this article, the authors suggest that in fitness games, “idealized” characters that serve as avatars for players in the virtual world are limited in body type and often binary in gender. In-game avatars tend to be customized to focus more on the equipment they wear than on their actual physical body, and as a game that requires the player to exercise in the real world, it is incomplete to take into account the player’s personal details of their body type and health metrics. Finally through the authors’ research, the appearance of the character can simultaneously have an impact on the player’s behavior both inside and outside of the virtual environment.

          The subject matter of this article shares some similarities with the direction of my research, so building on the issues raised in this article, I hope that my wearable controller seems to be able to bypass the world in the screen and address these issues to some extent from a physical world perspective. Since the wearable is the subject of the user, it is much more personal than an external device, and for the purposes of wearable use it needs to be adapted to the individual’s body type. And in the process of using it, it emphasizes more on the connection with the wearers themselves, and when some of the commercial games have not yet been changed, by letting the wearers get in touch with themselves, it helps the wearers to stabilize their self-identity, feel their influence on the digital world, and listen to more of themselves rather than the fixed image they have been designed to have.

Reference 2: Richard, Gabriela, and Yasmin Kafai. “Making Physical and Digital Games with e-Textiles: a Workshop for Youth Making Responsive Wearable Games and Controllers.” 

          In this article, the authors mention learning through design a system by the learners themselves. This inspired my work. I want the player to feel a system of activity within their own body that they have constructed when using this controller, and the movement of this system within their body affects the digital world, and every small change in this system is reflected back to them in the digital world.

Reference 3: EJtech. “liquid MIDI: paper goes electronic to create unique controls and sounds.”

          In this piece, electrically conductive ink is printed directly onto fabric, working through a microcontroller as well as MIDI protocols. In my work, it is important to ensure that the final piece is thin and lightweight. The qualities and shape of this unique material inspired me to make my controllers lighter. While I can’t print directly on the fabric, I can use conductive threads instead of ink. I wrapped the sensors in fabric tape and sewed them to my shirt to achieve the tactile experience of controlling on a soft fabric, so that the player not only gets the feedback of pressing the buttons, but also gets the feedback of feeling the buttons being pressed themselves.

Citation:

  EJtech, Piotr boruslawski. “liquid MIDI: paper goes electronic to create unique controls and sounds.” Designboom. July, 2015. https://www.designboom.com/technology/ejtech-liquid-midi-07-20-2015/

  Czerwonka, Sara, et al. “One Ring Fit to Rule Them All? An Analysis of Avatar Bodies and Customization in Exergames.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 12, 2021, pp. 695258–695258, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.695258.

  Richard, Gabriela, and Yasmin Kafai. “Making Physical and Digital Games with e-Textiles: a Workshop for Youth Making Responsive Wearable Games and Controllers.” Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, ACM, 2015, pp. 399–402, https://doi.org/10.1145/2771839.2771926.