I started working on a similar project during Summer'21. I began this project intending to create wearables classical dancers from all over the world could wear. I quickly realized that this was a big, audacious goal and, I should start small. I decided to make a wearable Bharatanatyam (Indian classical dance) dancers could wear to help communicate their story by leveraging the power of emotions. 

I made a belt with mechanical lotus flowers.  These flowers translated emotions into petal movement. For example, if the dancer wanted to represent happiness, the flower bloomed.

I believed I had a clear vision for what I wanted my project to be when I started the Open Innovation period and; that I could jump right into creating a final product, but boy was I mistaken! As I journeyed through the design process over the following weeks, I encountered several instances where I had no notion what my project even was.

The main problem with the project I made over the summer was that it was either black or white. It became quite difficult to represent complex emotions generally shown in Bharatanatyam pieces simply through a mechanical output.  

The next iteration incorporated two wearables. One for the dancer, consisting of mechanical lotus flowers, and another for the audience, comprising two components: touch/feeling and smell. 

Despite only having a vague idea of what my updated design looked like, I completed a few design research interviews with Bharatanatyam dancers. 

Through these interviews, I quickly learned that having so many features distracts the audience from the dancers' performance. They also informed the further iterations in terms of keeping the dancer at the center rather than just focusing on the dance form.

Another thing we realized was that having a wearable for the dancer(s) wasn't the best idea because - 1. They already wear stunning clothing, and wearable may detract from that. 2.  They already wear ghungroos, which are quite heavy garments on their feet, and adding another layer will only add to their stress.

The last design iteration I got to was a neck wearable worn by the audience members. This wearable had Peltier tile modules. these modules have a very broad temperature range. The emotions the dancer wants to convey are inputted through accelerometers that track their palm and finger movements and are then translated onto a temperature scale (with the output being the Peltier tiles). 

Through this design the audience can actually feel the story rather than it simply being told to them like in some past iterations.

I can't wait to go through the design process again and see where it takes me with this project!