Tag: accessible fashion (Page 1 of 2)

Clothing Tags for Individuals with Visual Impairments

January 17, 2014 / kateringland

August 8, 2012. UMBC SURF Poster Session

Self expression through clothing is inherently visual and is not readily accessible to those with visual impairments. Presently, the best method for conveying information is with high-tech devices that identify fabric colors, but don’t give information about pattern, graphics, washing instructions, or style. Designing clothing tags for the visually impaired user requires that the tags be discreet, comfortable, easy to locate, and that it be reasonably simple to retrieve information from them. With this study we contribute a collection of tagging systems that can be used in future research for the development and testing of fully functional tagging systems that will empower visually impaired users when making clothing decisions.

Ringland, Kathryn. “Accessible Clothing Tags: Designing for Individuals with Visual Impairments”.CHI 2013. Paris, France. May 2013.*

Williams, M., Ringland, K., Hurst, A. “Designing an Accessible Clothing Tag System for People with Visual Impairments”. ASSETS 2013. Bellevue, WA. October 2013.*

ASSETS 2012 Conference

To be honest, I started this blog immediately after I returned from the ASSETS 2012 conference, but everything else in ...

Week 10

In a whirlwind of getting everything done, the summer is over! This past week I created a video showcasing all ...

Week 9

I can't believe the summer is almost over! I guess it's a good sign that I wish I were in ...

Winter Update, Grad School News

January 15, 2014 / kateringland / 0 Comments

Hello! Here’s just a quick update from me. The first 6 months of my graduate school experience has just flown by. I’m now in my second week of winter quarter. Phew!

First, I want to just make an observation about my experience so far before I get into the news segment of this post. I have had moments of sheer anxiety and insecurity, but those seem to be balanced out with moments of happy triumph. An email I received recently really sums up why there is this oscillation of confidence. The contents of the email were along the lines of “You have a really awesome idea, I’m impressed with you. Why aren’t you talking more in class? You should sit in the front row.” And this is what grad school is all about: small moments of celebration followed by many moments of pushing you to the next level. I’m learning to treasure my little celebrations and embrace all the criticism because it’s going to make me a much stronger person in the long run.

Talking more in class discussion? I’ll save that subject for a different blog post.

Onto the news!

My team submitted a project to the iConference Social Media Expo competition and made it to the final round. We will be flying to Berlin the first week of March to present our work. My favorite part of the project was editing together the video for it. You can see the video and read our abstract on my portfolio page.

I also presented my poster at ASSETS 2013 in October for work I did on the Clothing Tagging Systems for the Visually Impaired. While I probably won’t be doing further work on this project, I got a lot of valuable feedback. The experience I gained from this project has influenced much of the work I am currently doing and will be doing in the future.

I have a couple more projects in the works that I’m excited to share with everyone when they are a little further along. Stay tuned!

ASSETS 2012 Conference

December 23, 2012 / kateringland / 0 Comments

To be honest, I started this blog immediately after I returned from the ASSETS 2012 conference, but everything else in this semester got away from me and I didn’t post it. I’m on winter break now, so I am finally able to catch up on things.

I have finally returned home from my journey to Boulder, Colorado. Firstly, we drove. We should have realized what a crazy idea this was when we stood in a room full of Ringlands, told them our plan to drive down to Boulder and back in a week, and no one even batted an eye.

Some of the Ringlands eating at the lutefisk dinner in Poulsbo.

With a belly full of lutefisk (because nothing says the start to a great road trip than unending plates of lefse and lutefisk) we left Poulsbo, WA to arrive 36 hours later in Boulder, CO. I’m going to admit upfront that I missed the keynote Monday morning. We rolled into the hotel as the address was about half-way over. If only we hadn’t stopped for that 2 hours of sleep in Rawlins, Wyoming!

First impressions:

*ASSETS is much, MUCH smaller than any other conference I have attended (less than 100 people versus a couple thousand plus). This allowed me to get to know a lot of the people there.

*ASSETS is a single-track deal. This was great! I didn’t have to choose between two awesome papers. Everything is in one room. With the exception of the keynote, I didn’t have to miss any of the conference.

*It’s really nice having such a close-knit, small community. People were super enthusiastic not only about their own projects, but other people’s work and were very willing to get in there and give each other ideas.

There was a lot of really fantastic work presented at the conference. It ranged from web accessibility to assistive tech hardware to biofeedback interfaces. The populations being worked with were quite varied from physically disabled to the elderly to the visually impaired and so on. I think the most heartening thing about the conference was to see how much great work is being done to help people.

The grad student I worked with on my DREU project, Michele A. Burton, gave her presentation on the accessible fashion we had been working on. She did a fantastic job. I very much wish to follow in her footsteps.

Boulder itself was absolutely beautiful. I had the opportunity to visit the campus and see the Human-Centered Computing Lab there. It was great to meet some of the students and see what projects they are working on. This is definitely one of my top choices for graduate schools.

We got 5 inches of snow just as the conference was ending. It forced us to stay an extra day, but it was worth it.

A creek near our hotel in Boulder, CO.

Week 10

August 13, 2012 / kateringland / 0 Comments

In a whirlwind of getting everything done, the summer is over! This past week I created a video showcasing all of the tagging systems I put into clothes. I also wrote a presentation, which I gave at the Summer Undergraduate Research Festival on Wednesday, August 8th. This was the same festival that I created and presented a poster at.

Here are the slides from my presentation. The video I created followed these slides.

Tagging Systems to Assist Visually Impaired Users Identify Visual Data in Clothing.

And here is the video I created:

All in all, I’m really sad to be going home and leaving this project behind. I had a lot of fun working on it and learned a LOT. It was wonderful working with so many great people. I’m super excited to be continuing on with school and working on graduate school applications this fall!

Week 9

August 6, 2012 / kateringland / 0 Comments

I can’t believe the summer is almost over! I guess it’s a good sign that I wish I were in grad school now so that I could keep going with my project. The RFID Reader kit arrived, so I was able to put it together and actually get it to scan RFID tags. The kit was a shield that just plugged into the top of the arduino. I used the adafruit tutorial to complete the reader and upload the software required for reading the tags.

Reader Kit Unpacked

Breakaway Headers

Soldering the Headers

Soldering Set Up

All Soldered

Reader Assembled

Antenna with RFID Tag

And it works!

This week I also found out that I have been selected to present at the Summer Undergraduate Research Festival on campus next Wednesday. This means I will be giving a 8 minute talk about the project I have been working on this summer. So, I started working on my talk and a video that I will play during the presentation.

Week 8

July 30, 2012 / kateringland / 0 Comments

This week I finished up putting tags into the clothes. I also did a lot of writing this week. I submitted two poster abstracts- one to the campus Research Festival and one to Grace Hopper. I also started a draft of the final paper for this project I have been working on all summer. Luckily, actually quite enjoy the writing process. I’ll be finding out this coming week if my poster abstracts were accepted. Next up: making a poster!

On Thursday, I went to the ADA Celebration on campus. We put some of our projects on display, including the clothe I have tagged. It was really great meeting people and talking a bit about the work we have been doing. We also heard speeches from Dr. Hrabowski and Governor O’Malley.

UMBC HCC Group at the ADA Celebration July 26, 2012

Me at the ADA Celebration

This coming week I’ll be working more on my paper and designing my poster. I hope the RFID reader parts come in, so that I can build the last system for the project. I’ll also be playing around with an NFC enabled tablet to see if I can get it to read the tags we have in the lab!

Week 7

July 23, 2012 / kateringland / 0 Comments

There was a lot going on this last week, especially now as I am looking at deadlines for my poster abstracts and wrapping up for the summer.

We finally got our “smart closet” put together with shelving and all!

A nice, organized closet space for our clothes that are going to be tagged.

We narrowed down our list of tagging systems that we want to prototype. We had a fashion hackathon on Tuesday to put together the website that will be part of our prototypes. For some of our systems, the user can look up a button shape or specific location to help remind them of what it identifies (color, how to wash, etc). In another web based system, the user can input a number that is written in braille on a tag inside the clothes to get all the information about it.

Fashion Hackathon

Ribbon with Braille in Puff Paint

This star represent certain information about this shirt.

I also built some prototypes with a more high-tech solution. One uses the QR code iron-on to the clothes. A second solution is the RFID tag with reader.I am still waiting on the parts for the reader before I can prototype this system.

QR Codes ready to be printed.

On Wednesday, I went to the Summer Horizons grad school information session on campus. The information presented was phenomenal. They went over the timelines, keys to admissions (GRE Scores, Letters of Recommendation, and the Statement of Purpose), and what life is like as a grad student. There was a panel of grad students that answered questions about their own application process and what their lives are like now. To finish everything off, Dr. Freeman Hrabowski gave a great keynote speech. I wish I had recorded it, but I was too busy watching!

One of the things Dr. Hrabowski said was the following quote, which really stuck with me: “Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habit. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.”
– Lao Tzu

I’m glad I attended this information session, even though it wasn’t strictly a part of the internship I am doing. It helped me to really start exploring the reasons I want to go to grad school and how to organize my thoughts so I can get my applications together.

Wednesday afternoon, summer students from the Maryland School for the Blind came to visit UMBC. As part of their visit, the HCC department gave them some information about the research they do here on campus. Michele and I got to informally talk with some of the students about my project that I have been working on this summer. Some of them were really excited about the idea of just scanning clothes and getting the information about them. One student wanted to know when they would be able to buy the system. It’s really nice getting such positive feedback about the work I have been doing.

This coming week I will be writing abstracts for my research posters. I will be finishing up my prototypes, which will probably take the bulk of my time. I’m down to sewing in buttons and ribbons. As soon as we have IRB approval, we will be able to take our clothes to users to see what they think of our prototypes!

Week 6

July 16, 2012 / kateringland / 0 Comments

This week I worked with Amy and Michele to redevelop my project scope for the rest of the summer. In addition to RFID tags and readers for clothing, I am going to help brainstorm other ways someone could tag their clothing. I spent the first part of the week looking up how people are currently keeping track of their clothes.

I then decided on some different ways to tag clothes. Some ideas were buttons, safety pins, QR codes inside the clothes, and RFID tags. I then went on a shopping trip with Michele to stock our closet and get supplies for our prototype systems. At the end of the week I started prototyping some tags.

Sample Tag

I also spent some time with Amy looking forward to see where this research is headed. I’ve started thinking about what I will be doing after this summer is over and applying to graduate school. This experience hasn’t gotten me excited about keeping the momentum I have here going.

Week 4

July 2, 2012 / kateringland / 0 Comments

I cannot believe how quickly this internship is going by! The first month is already over! June ended with a severe thunderstorm that left my apartment building without power from 11pm to noon the next day. The weather certainly is a lot bigger here than in the Pacific Northwest.

Last week, I endeavored to play with my Arduino Uno some more. I followed through the tutorials first. This mostly consisted of hooking up LEDs and getting them to do different things (blink and so forth). It doesn’t sound very exciting, but trust me, it is. Here are some pictures from the tutorials:

This was with one LED hooked up.

These LEDs were flashing at different rates thanks to the program I wrote.

The culmination of the tutorials was to have the LED be controlled by a push button.

After I was feeling fairly confident about working with the tutorial, I moved on to the LCD Screen Kit, kindly provided by Amy. I was able to get it all soldered together. And I had it working with the program at first, but then something went wrong and I’m still working on getting it fixed. It’s taking the input from the computer and garbling it, as you will see in the pictures.

All the parts to be soldered together in the LCD Screen Kit.

Soldered back of the LCD Screen Kit.

LCD Screen Back

LCD Screen Kit Front

LCD Message Garbled

There is a bit more work to do figuring out how to ungarble the message. This week I’ll be turning my attention to RFID and NFC scanners and tags.

Week 3

June 25, 2012 / kateringland / 0 Comments

I spent a lot of this week playing with my arduino kit and researching the things we might use with it. I began compiling lists of shields that will attach to the arduino to add functioning. I also looked up tutorials for putting together an LCD kit from Sparkfun.

In my researching, I found a pretty cool blog: Fashioning Tech. It’s fun to go through the articles and see what interesting other people around the world have been doing with fashion and tech. Some of the projects are really quite beautiful. For instance, this article about lace that reads poetry is fascinating.

I think the highlight of the week was learning how to solder from Amy. I’m going to be using it to put circuits and wiring together, but it’s one of those things that is just good to know for life. (My dad is very excited that I can now help him with home repairs.)

My very first soldered wire.

This coming week, Michele will be back from her conferences in the UK and we will be sitting down on Monday to narrow my project down for the summer. I’m really looking forward to hearing about everything she learned at the conferences!

Tag: accessible fashion (Page 1 of 2)

Clothing Tags for Individuals with Visual Impairments

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ASSETS 2012 Conference

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Week 9

Winter Update, Grad School News

ASSETS 2012 Conference

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