Exploring On-Skin Prototyping Toolkits for Wearable Creation: A Workshop Study with Middle School Students

Emerging wearable construction toolkits offer new avenues for hands-on learning through an accessible and creative making process. This paper uses an on-skin wearable prototyping toolkit in hands-on workshops with a total of 45 middle-school students aged between 11 and 15. Besides investigating the effectiveness of utilizing the on-skin toolkit to foster creativity, we iteratively designed and optimized the workshop format, which consists of a hands-on tutorial, a group-making process, and a presentation of project prototypes. Our findings suggest positive engagement and interest in the making process from the middle-school students who participated in the on-skin wearable workshop.