High Water Pants: Designing Embodied Environmental Speculation

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In this paper, we present the High Water Pants: speculative wearable technology which makes climate change tangible for everyday cyclists. The pants work by mechanically shortening when a cyclist wearing the pants enters an area of Seattle, USA, which is projected to be impacted by sea-level rise in 30-80 years. This interaction 'bends time' by allowing cyclists to feel future climate change data in the present. First, we discuss the research through design process of creating the High Water Pants including foundational research, a description of the design concept and results of a preliminary study with the pants. Second, we discuss three implications of the pants for human-computer interaction (HCI): (1) they offer the concept of a 'present/future' paradigm for embodied speculation, (2) our research process demonstrates how to successfully involve more-than-human perspectives, and (3) we articulate how the High Water Pants respond to shifts in HCI's framing of sustainability.