Design for pro-active wearability

This paper presents the result of researches in progress at Biodesign Lab of Politecnico di Milano. The focus of these researches is to develop wearable devices designed around the body. The relation between human body and the new technologies (microtech and smart textile) is changing deeply and continually. It is essential to emphasise the need of developing an interdisciplinary approach amongst the different areas, their point of contact being, naturally, their interest in the human-being as a unicum and a complex entity. The design necessarily should drive these changes. It is fundamental for a product in close contact with human body to be totally adaptable to human anatomy. The wearables fix body silhouette inhibiting or making easier movements and postures through ergonomic and enveloping shapes. The research in wearable area is directed toward a new phase, where the attention is on the user desire and toward the creation of a new interdisciplinary sector, in which the various traditional disciplines are integrated. It is necessary to create interdisciplinary program, a field in which the researchers would learn a new scientific language that allows them to talk effectively and promote interdisciplinary capability recognized and legitimized in the proper discipline. Indeed, it is crucial that more researchers could participate in this multidisciplinary field, and that is the reason why the role of the industrial design is established. The development of the wearable device design needs to accomplish the requirements of comfort and adaptableness connected to the anatomy of human body. From this point of view, the wearable is not an overlapping structure or close architecture but an enveloping film, “a second skin”. The contribution of industrial design, in order to be innovative, will have to structure and analyze several intervention levels: methodologies approach and education. Into this scientific context has been introduced a new discipline - biodesign. Behind the main philosophical concept of Biodesign is the human body, considered as a psycho-biological unicum [1]. Research activities, therefore, aim at developing artificial devices which can be fully integrated into the human body. This target is achieved thanks to an interdisciplinary approach aimed at fill the gap in wearable systems that sometimes just consider technological, functional and medical requirements but barely meet user needs. Biodesign approach considers and estimates human physical and psychical abilities, his limits and necessities. This feature, typical of wearables is connected to the primary target of research, so that improve comfort and wearability.