Drapability and light are the two design themes of this skirt. The light sources used are 6 OLEDS (Organic light-emitting diodes), integrated in a fabric consisting out of over 2500 patches.
Drapely-o-lightenment was shown at Architextiles in Tilburg, Place-it in Berlin, and Gouden Geesten in Utrecht and Pretty Smart Textiles Ronse, Belgium.

The blue dots are the activities. Horizontal is the timeline from the -left- beginning till the end of the process. The 6 competences are placed on the vertical line:
1. User Focus & Perspective: Getting to know their user.
2. Ideas & Concepts: Creating ideas and transform them into concepts.
3. Social & Cultural Awareness: Reflect on context and existing products.
4. Form & Senses: Design explorations for the actual products.
5. Integrating Technology: Research, develop and implement (existing) technology.
6. Business: Find out how to create a valuable business with the project.

Research through design allows creating a dialogue with the material. It uses making and reflection on action as a generator of knowledge. Our aim is to explore the opportunities and challenges of smart textiles. The Fablab is our set up, a place that allows us to combine the hackingscientific-, and design community. It stimulates collaboration and the knowledge exchange needed for the development of smart textile systems. A collaborative prototyping workshop for medical
products combined two worlds. The textile world in Saxion aims at incorporating conductive materials into textile structures and functional- / 3D printing to create systems for applications such as flexible heating systems and wearable technology. We combined this with the world of Industrial Design at TU/e, focused on the design of intelligent products, systems and services by the research through design approach. The collaboration between these different disciplines accelerated the process by reducing the resistance to the new and skipped the frustration on failure.

Download paper: http://www.scientific.net/AST.80.112