A Posture Reflective Chair
This project is about designing a chair that reflects how the user has been sitting on it. The posture information is recorded by a series of switches placed in the chair which are tripped by the user sitting. This information is then mapped to vertical fabric strips with elastic edges on the back of the chair. As the user sits and changes positions, the folded edge of the vertical fabric strips is pulled out, revealing more of its color.
Related Works and Ideas
The idea of using fabric to fold came from a device produced by Andrew Vande Moere. This device used the folding of fabric to reflect information about the user as a wearable device which people would carry with them throughout their day. This gave me the understanding of just how finely textured information can be when conveyed through folds in fabric.
This project was coded using Arduino. There are many good tutorial on the Arduiono playground that help users to learn the software and its possiblities.
Unfolding Coloured Fabric Strips
Unfolding vertical cloth strips allowed for a subtle display of information that has an essentially infinite amount of sublte variation. As the cloth is being pulled, different patterns become prevalent each time the fabric is pulled. The combination and sequence of unfoldings will produce a different stretch of the fabric strip. As such the chair visualization will be subtley different each time the user see's it but with strong tendencies to reveal more colour at different parts of the strips. This variation will increase the longevity of the users interest as they will produce different folding patterns each time they use it.
During the concept design process many questions were raised about using the back of a chair to display information to the user. It is true that the user will not be able to see it evolve unless they have someone else sit in it. However the information stays on the back of the chair until the user returns and sits down. This means that while they do not get to watch it move constantly it will always remain as the first thing they see when they sit down and begin working again, perhaps the ideal time to remind the user of how they have been sitting. Another problem that any information visualization device that seeks to help the user understand their behavior is distracting the user. This visualization provides very subtle but still readable information that the user will consistently interact with throughout their day but is not always in view. It will take some time before the user becomes completely uninterested in the device.
Project Evolution
The project began as a way of providing a visualization of a persons posture that might help them to adopt more healthy habits such as taking short breaks periodically or changing their posture. It was initially concieved of as a chair pad that could be fitted onto any chair but as the design process continued, it was decided that modifying one chair would enable the best realization of the concept. Here are some initial ideas of what the visualization might look like:
