Studio Project 1: Enhanced Wristband

In the first class of E-textile, we made a simple wristband with an electronic lighting circuit. Our homework was to make an enhanced wristband demonstrating decorative textile skills, more polished finishing, and enhanced circuit performance or circuit responsiveness. When I went home that day, my mom really liked the simple wristband I made as she found it quite useful. To further explain, she feeds the stray cats near our home every day and sometimes in the evenings. She thought the wristband could replace her phone flashlight when she was feeding cats in the evenings. Therefore, I designed the enhanced wristband taking her as the main user. If you are interested in how I made it, please read the following steps:

My mom feeds the stray cats near our home every day. Usually, she would do all her daily work before feeding the cats. There are times that she is so busy that it is already evening when she finishes all her work. She then goes to feed the cats. The place where she feeds the cats is quite dark in the evenings and she has to pull her phone out, open the flashlight, and prepare the food using only one hand. It is very inconvenient for her.

Last Thursday, when I finished making the simple version of the wristband, I thought it was cool but didn't view it as useful. However, when I went back home and showed it to my mom, she really liked it. She said that she could use the wristband to replace her phone flashlight and so as to free her two hands to prepare food for the cats. I was surprised that the wristband I made would actually turn out to be something useful.

When she wore the simple wristband I made in class, it was too big for her as she is thinner than me. Therefore, I decided to design and make a prettier and lighter wristband for her in the weekly assignment.

Before starting my project, I first did a little research to see how other people make their wristbands. The above were some interesting ones I found. Since my mom is my main user and I want to make something she will like. I also showed her these pictures. She told me that she would like to have some flower elements on the wristband and it is better just to keep everything simple.

After doing the mini research, I started to sketch my design. Since my mom really needs lights to see the cats and food, I think it is better to add some more LED lights to the enhanced wristband. I opened "The Book of Cosplay Lights" to find if there were any methods that I could add more LED lights onto my design. I realized that using the 3V battery that we currently have, adding one more LED light will decrease the battery's lifespan. On the other hand, using a 9V battery may be a good choice in terms of lighting but it is bigger than the 3V battery and may not fit well on the wristband. Trying to make everything simple and convenient for my mom, I did not want to add any extra stuff connecting to the wristband.

Therefore, I decided to just use two 3V batteries and each of them was going to connect to one LED light. Then, I sketched how the circuit would be looked like. I tried to make each battery have its own circuit as I did not know whether things would work if everything were connected. After designing the circuits, I drew different appearance designs for the wearable. I was thinking of adding a layer of cloth on top of the original layer with circuits to cover the strings and the ugly battery holder. I have tried different color combinations of flowers, a space topic due to the feeling given by the LED lights, and some simple rhombic textures. Finally, I decided to go with the flower one as my mom likes this element.

Before coming to school on Tuesday, I measured both my wrist and my mom's wrist. Her wrist is about 16cm and mine is about 20cm. I realized that there wasn't a large difference there and maybe I could add more buttons to make the wristband fit to both hers and my wrist.

That afternoon, I came to the fab lab and started the sewing process. I sketched my design onto the cloth, stuck every material I needed, and started to connect the circuit. Everything went pretty smooth that day. I spent about 3 hours in the fab lab and successfully finished one of the circuits.

On Tuesday night, I finished the second circuit at home. I cut out the cloth I needed for the top layer and tried to see if the wristband looked nice. However, I realized that before adding the top layer, the wristband seemed quite cool if you don't look closely. The colors of the current top layer were highly saturated and the wristband looked somehow kindergartenish. Before going to bed, I realized that maybe I should change my design.

On Wednesday afternoon, I came to the fab lab again. I tried different combinations of the elements that I have and discussed with my friend Huaze about how I could change my design. We figured out that the problem was not on the flowers. When we just placed the flower onto the original black and white background, the whole composition seemed simpler and the flowers could stand out more clearly too.

Moreover, I realized that the circuit lines were very cool and I still wanted to have them in my design. On the other hand, I also wished to have the top layer to cover the sketches and the ugly battery holders. In order to do both of the above things, I decided to add a black top layer with strings that form the shape of two fake circuits and then sewed the two flowers on the top layer. I also cut holes on the top layers to let the LED lights, switches, and. buttons be exposed.

After working another 5 hours in the fab lab on Wednesday, I finished making the enhanced wristband. My mom saw it and tried it on. It fitted to her wrist well. The only problem I realized after making this wristband was that while I was thinking about covering the battering holders up, I did not design a hole or something that could let users change the batteries. From "The Book of Cosplay Lights," I learned that the life of these batteries for lighting up 1 LED light would be about 11.25 hours. I hope my mom will enjoy her next 1-2 month of using this wristband. I may eventually separate this wristband and maybe redesign some parts of it to have a space for changing batteries in the future.