Weaving a Second Skin: Exploring Opportunities for Crafting On-Skin Interfaces Through Weaving

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Weaving as a craft possesses the structural, textural, aesthetic, and cultural expressiveness for creating a diversity of soft, wearable forms that are capable of technological integration. In this paper, we extend the woven practice for crafting on-skin interfaces, exploring the potential to "weave a second skin." Weaving incorporates circuitry in the textile structure, which, when extended to on-skin interface fabrication, allows for electrical connections between layers while maintaining a slim form. Weaving also supports multi-materials integration in the structure itself, offering richer materiality for on-skin devices. We present the results of extensive design experiments that form a design space for adapting weaving for on-skin interface fabrication. We introduce a fabrication approach leveraging the skin-friendly material of PVA, which enables on-skin adherence, and a series of case studies illustrating the functional and design potential of the approach. To understand the feasibility of on-skin wear, we conducted a user study on device wearability. To understand the expressiveness of the design space, we conducted a workshop study in which textiles practitioners created woven on-skin interfaces. We draw insights from this to understand the potential of adapting weaving for crafting on-skin interfaces.