Background

Smart clothing or smart fashion is clothing that contains an embedded computer or smart device to provide the wearer with useful functions or information. Smart clothing is part of wearable technology, and may be used for many applications, such as monitoring vital signs for health, activity tracking for fitness, location tracking for navigation, monitoring the weather and other environmental factors for information or for science, as wearable telephony devices, for displaying signs for communication, for personal adornment, and so forth. Wearable technology as a whole is becoming commonplace, with the increasing popularity of devices like smartwatches. The goal is to enhance the wearer’s quality of life, and their well-being.
​​​​​​​A smart electronic device is a useful instrument, machine, or gadget that is controlled by electronic circuitry microcontroller boards, or sometimes by a single-board computer like a Raspberry Pi, and that perform only a few limited functions. We have many different kinds of devices at home, on our person, or at school to perform useful work for us, or to provide us with information, in order to increase our well-being.
 

The design brief

Design smart clothing for yourself or someone that you know using simple electronic circuitry, or a microcontroller board like the Arduino. You may design one or more items of smart clothing, that may be casual wear, or formal wear, and so forth. The smart clothing that you design ought to provide practical and useful functions for the user who is wearing them, or it may provide them with useful information, and not be purely decorative. Construct a working prototype of your smart clothing and test it. Work on this project in a small team with a group of your classmates.

​​​​​The design thinking process

Follow the six stages of the design thinking process to ensure that you are thorough and do everything necessary to succeed in your design project. First, you endeavour to understand the design topic and EMPATHISE with the needs of the users. With that understanding, you can DEFINE what is essential to the product or system that you are designing. Then you IDEATE, that is, you creatively come up with ideas and develop them. The next step is to PROTOTYPE your chosen design solution in a physical form and improve it through trial-and-error. Then you TEST your design idea to elicit the opinions of users. And finally, at the end of the process, you REFLECT upon your project to benefit from the experience. Use the appropriate methods from the Design Thinking for Schools website as you proceed along the design thinking process.
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Note for teachers

Undertaking a student design project using electrical parts or microcontrollers such as Arduino requires:

• teachers who are able to supervise such a project;
• laboratories or workshops with electrical and electronic parts and tools;
• ​​​​​​​and students who are trained to work with electricity, tools, and equipment.

Read the guide for teachers on Safety for the PROTOTYPE Stage for Level IV to safely supervise this design project.