Due to the fact that I didn’t want to interfere in his normal behavior, the wearable system had to adapt to his normal activities.
After doing some testing on how to attach the symbols to his body it turned out that having a module that would be attached to most of the child’s t-shirts and sweaters would be the best option. For doing that I chose to have individual two-part objects containing the printed symbol; the base would be behind the t-shirt and the front part would be over the t-shirt holding each other while pressing the textile as the image # shows. In this way we can attach as many symbols to the t-shirt as we decide, even on the sleeves, for example. For the testing session I built 15 modules and printed 30 symbols that can be used together with the modules.
The mobile application and the wearable symbols were meant to work together as a tool for the kid to understand what the symbols are about and then use them for communicating. At that moment the Mobile App was still just a complementary tool for the wearable symbols that doesn´t need any special device to work, more “natural” tool it seemed to be for me.
Wearable symbols attached to Ludvig´s Sweater
Ludvig wasn´t very comfortable with the wearable symbols
Ludvig was practicing some hand signs after watching some videos in the Moible App
