Scaling E-Textile Production: Understanding the Challenges of Soft Wearable Production for Individual Creators
Jingwen Zhu, Hsin-Liu Kao
Abstract
Electronic textiles (e-textiles) incorporate functional capabilities into fabric forms, providing direct body contact not afforded by traditional hardware. While widely researched by the Wearable Computing community, e-textiles have yet to reach broad prevalence in the consumer market. A major obstacle lies in its scalable production. Specifically, moving from prototype to production remains elusive for individual researchers, makers, and startups. To better understand these challenges and pinpoint opportunities to reduce barriers, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 7 subject matter experts with experience in low volume production of e-textile products. We identified common challenges encountered during the prototype-to-production process and summarized our findings in four themes: (1) lack of production standards; (2) gaps between apparel and hardware manufacturing; (3) gaps in manufacturing costs vs. market expectations; and (4) lack of production-capable e-textile solutions. Our study revealed opportunities for future research on tools, materials, and community support specific to low-volume e-textile production. We envision that accessible low-volume e-textile production could enable more creators to bring their creations to the next step.