Regenerative thinking is gaining momentum in HCI, shifting the focus from merely mitigating environmental harm to actively fostering cohabitation within more-than-human ecosystems. This shift challenges HCI researchers to develop new methodologies that engage with both material and cultural regeneration—harnessing the regenerative capacities of ecologies while preserving valuable knowledge systems. It also underscores the need for a fundamental onto-epistemological shift beyond anthropocentric notions of sustainability. To support HCI researchers in adopting regenerative approaches while addressing these challenges, this panel brings together a diverse group of design researchers working hands-on with materials ranging from biological to algorithmic. Through concrete examples and actionable insights, the panelists provide practical guidance on engaging with regenerative material ecologies. By interweaving multiple perspectives through a diffractive approach, the panel also explores the opportunities this emerging perspective offers for HCI, particularly at the intersection of sustainability, posthumanism, and decoloniality.

Serenity plays a pivotal role in human well-being, as it fosters an enduring sense of peace and calmness. Everyday textile artifacts, with their qualities of softness, malleability, and flexibility, hold the capacity to greatly enhance serenity in user experiences. Drawing from the foundation of materials experience and material-driven design, this paper introduces a design toolkit aimed at harnessing the potential of textiles in creating serene experiences. The toolkit was refined through two exploratory workshops involving design professionals from both academic and industrial backgrounds. By emphasizing the interplay of form, material, and time in textile experiences, this toolkit offers a vocabulary and set of techniques for discussing and designing for serene textile experiences across different material and time scales. We further explore avenues for the toolkit's employment, expansion, and adaptation for use in a wide array of material-driven design projects.

Multimorphic textile-forms, obtained through simultaneous thinking of material and form that change in design and/or use time, have the potential to elicit diverse performances in the use of textile artefacts, thereby extending their relevance in our everyday lives. We present AnimaTo, a multimorphic textile artefact designed for performativity that reacts to water exposure via the shrinking and dissolving of its fibres. Adopting a material-driven design approach, we engaged in material tinkering with these qualities to achieve changes in the texture, size, and shape of AnimaTo. Following this exploration, we conducted a pilot study to gain insights into AnimaTo's temporal behaviour and performativity in use. In the further development of the artefact, we highlight the challenges that arise in producing high-fidelity prototypes. This work grants insights into how designers can tune material, form, and temporal qualities of textile artefacts towards multiplicity of use and prolonged user-textile relationships.

HCI designers increasingly engage in the integration of microbes into artefacts, leveraging their distinct biological affordances for novel interactions. While in many explorations the interaction between humans and microbes is mediated, scholars also highlight the potential of direct interactions, such as visualising mechanical distortions or fostering a sense of relationality with nonhumans through eliciting intimate encounters. Seizing upon this potential, our study delves into the realm of direct interactions involving Flavobacteria, recently introduced as a colour-changing interactive medium in HCI. We present a design space for direct interactions where humans can (re)activate, (re)direct, and (re)arrange Flavobacteria’s colourations, thereby fostering a personal and dynamic interplay between humans and microbes. With our work, we aspire to provide pathways and ignite inspiration among HCI designers to create living artefacts that cultivate active engagement and heightened attentiveness towards microbial worlds and beyond.

Today’s fashion industry is marked by rapid production, early disposal and low-quality materials, resulting in environmental harm and social injustice. Denim production involves a resource-intensive and extended supply chain with entrenched design practices, leading to substantial pre-consumer waste. To address these issues, emerging design manufacturing techniques hold promise for fostering alternative sustainable fashion ecosystems yet remain largely underexplored by the industry. The current work focuses on 3D weaving, an innovative niche design manufacturing technique that enables the production of near-complete garments, facilitating zero waste and reducing labour-intensive steps at the cut-and-sew stage. Employing a qualitative approach informed by the literature and empirical research with denim industry professionals, this study investigates the potential of this novel design manufacturing technique in the context of systemic change beyond merely introducing technological advancement as an intervention in the existing industry. The analysis reveals four fundamental components: industry-led change, relocalisation, reimagining denim design roles and consumer communication. These key components, synthesised with the literature, are discussed respectively. We illustrate how the niche design manufacturing technique can shape novel fashion ecosystems by providing an exemplary concept which concerns the collaborative establishment of a small-scale local supply chain for 3D woven denim garments. Through this example, we aim to ignite discussions on a further reimagining of the fashion industry, utilising similar alternative lenses that prioritise sustainability over ultra-speed, high efficiency and mass production in alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure), 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production) and 17 (Partnerships for the Goals).

In this paper, we explore how textile-form thinking, i.e., the simultaneous design and construction of the textile and form, can be leveraged as a strategy to embrace and unlock the performative potential of woven interactive textiles to building towards more intuitive interactions with woven interactive textiles in our everyday. First, we designed and wove five textile-form interfaces, working as contact switches and sensors, with sensing capabilities and diverse performative qualities. Then, we investigated the action possibilities of the interfaces in an exploratory study. Grounded on the study's outcomes, we identified three design themes relative to the performativity of our woven textile-form interfaces. Finally, we derived practical design tactics that designers can apply to design for the performativity of woven textile-form interfaces.

A woven textile-form is a form that is constructed simultaneously as the textile is woven. Interfaces designed with this approach hold undisclosed potential for rich interactions. However, the design of woven textile-form interfaces requires specialised tacit knowledge, which is limited even in craft and practice spaces; and it is therefore inaccessible to HCI designers. To bridge this gap, we present the material-driven journey of a multidisciplinary team to design a woven textile-form interface using various techniques such as paper models and diagrams to design for multi-layer weaving. Replacing traditional yarns with conductive yarn, we achieved woven textile-forms with electronic sensing capabilities. By outlining our process, the pictorial highlights the challenges and opportunities of textile-form thinking for HCI designers. Additionally, its printed version serves as a ‘paper prototyping tool’ for designers to gain hands-on experience developing textile-form interfaces.

Textile and textile-based form designers lack relevant design methods for designing with a deeper understanding of the systems and futures thinking required to transform their industries. This chapter’s ambition is to bridge the gulf between holism in theory and holism in design practice. Multimorphism is defined as holism through practice, encompassing multiple scales, forms, times and perspectives, that ranges from nanoscale material behaviours to the social and environmental context surrounding the materials and outcomes. Experiments conducted during the author’s PhD research, and subsequent related experiments, provide tangible examples that illustrate how Multimorphism can be experienced and used. These prototypes embody the contextual, real-world inputs of a field in a tangible way, while highlighting connections and gaps in knowledge and technology. Their multiple formats enable multimorphic, transdisciplinary communication and act as translators and vectors for mutual understanding. Importantly, they visualise possible futures and provide the means to achieve them. This chapter articulates Multimorphic Textile Systems as an emerging research field for circular textile and textile-form design practices and argues for the important role prototyping has in making holistic design theory, practices and outcomes.

When designing Woven Textile-forms, both the 3D object and the textile it is composed of need to be developed simultaneously, a process requiring an adaptation of currently established methods from both textile and fashion design. This paper provides an overview of existing examples for woven formconstruction approaches through the lens of fabric (non-)rectangularity. It subsequently presents the method of flattening a 3D form into a weaveable 2D format, and the alternative weaving methods of Modular Weaving, Non-binary Weaving and Multi-selvedge Weaving destined at constructing nonrectangular seamless Woven Textile-forms. It further describes a range of associated prototyping and visualisation techniques including Maps of Bindings, paper models, Thread Maps and miniature nail looms. These are destined at helping textile designers in conceiving textiles in the shape of the final object instead of flat rectangular surfaces, and at providing woven form designers with alternatives to conventional cut-and-assemble approaches, thus creating new grounds for cooperation between both disciplines. The utility of these methods and techniques was tested during a workshop for textile design Masters’ students at École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the results of which show that the integration of form-thinking into the textile design process is possible and generates new opportunities for form-making beyond cut-and-assemble.

Technology embeddedness in HCI textiles has great potential for enabling novel interactions and enriched experiences, but unless carefully designed, could inadvertently worsen HCI’s sustainability problem. In an attempt to bridge sustainable debates and practical material-driven scholarship in HCI, we propose Multimorphic Textile-forms (MMTF), as a design approach developed through a lens of multiplicity and extended life cycles, that facilitate change in both design/production and use-time via the simultaneous thinking of the qualities and behaviour of material and form. We provide a number of cases, textile-form methods and vocabulary to enable exploration in this emerging design space. MMTF grants insights into textiles as complex material systems whose behaviour can be tuned across material, interaction and ecological scales for conformal, seamless, and sustainable outcomes.

Introduced in 2020, the notion of living artefacts encompasses biodesign outcomes that maintain the vitality of organisms such as fungi, algae, bacteria, and plants in the use of everyday artefacts, enabling new functions, interactions, and expressions within our daily lives. This paper situates living artefacts at the intersection of the sustainability discourse and more-than-human ontologies, illuminating the unprecedented opportunities that living artefacts present for regenerative ecologies. These ecologies are characterized by a fundamental inclination toward mutualism, creativity, and coevolution. In regenerative ecologies, the human-nature relationship transcends the binary distinction and it manifests as a single autopoietic system in which the constituent members collaboratively engage in the creation, transformation, and evolution of shared habitats. The paper outlines five pillars, supplemented by guiding questions and two illustrative cases, to aid designers in unlocking, articulating, and critically evaluating the potential of living artefacts for regenerative ecologies.

Material-Driven Design (MDD) proposes that we value the behaviours, performance properties, and aesthetics that emerge from a material’s inherent properties – an approach that provides a much-needed perspective for the textile and fashion industry as it develops new sustainable and circular systems. This research expands this material-led approach to include design-production processes framed within holistic notions of sustainability. In contrast to a conventional top-down design research process, material-processual-driven design approaches may enable us to break from the trap of developing and evaluating the outcomes of new design systems through the lens of our existing (usually unsustainable) approaches. This paper reflects on the tensions experienced by the authors in navigating concerns of technological feasibility, aesthetic outcomes, and the sustainable goals framing two sets of woven textile-form design experiments. Textile-forms are design-production processes that emerge from the simultaneous production of textile and form via the interlacement of matter/fibre/yarn and are designed to facilitate localised, on-demand production of textile-based objects. We will present the experiments, which were developed over six months, reflecting on the technical and evaluation processes that contributed to their development and the challenges that arose. This paper provides grounded examples of design researchers navigating this challenging space and the outcomes that emerge and aims to contribute to a greater understanding of circular techno-aesthetics that may support the industry as it develops the new systems it needs.

Designers of textile-based interactive systems tend to treat woven fabrics as static materials and lack deeper understandings of how the textile can be designed for responsive behaviours in artefacts. As a result, in most studies across design and HCI, textiles are employed as substrates for computational, biological, or smart materials. This narrow view limits the potential of textiles that can be programmed to express responsive behaviour through their inherent material qualities. Our paper aims at bridging this gap in the design of animated textile artefacts. We present woven textile-forms where textile structures are programmed to tune the behaviour of low-melt polyester yarn that shrinks when heat is applied, resulting in complex topological and textural woven forms that can change over time. Foregrounding woven-forms as a medium for animated textiles, our work calls for design and HCI researchers to pay attention to textileness for prolonged relationships between users and animated textile artefacts while eliminating waste from production and end of life.

This article describes the use of three-dimensional (3D) software in zero-waste fashion design, with a focus on its application in the context of the authors’ research and experience in industry and education. It expands on its use in visualisation for merchandising and marketing, to discuss how as a hybrid design and prototyping tool, 3D software could transform zero-waste design in industry, education and research. This research uses an experimental design approach and reflects on the authors’ design process before using 3D software, and its transformation upon learning, due to its utility for holistic 2D/3D practices. The article explores a range of examples of 3D software in use, revealing new design workflows that it allows for in articulating the relationship between form, pattern cutting and waste–and concludes that the advantages of 3D software to augment the garment design process is particularly evident for zero-waste fashion design.

This paper discusses Make/Use, a multi-disciplinary research project exploring “User Modifiable Zero Waste Fashion”. In particular, it addresses the use of textile print and a parametric matrix to facilitate the cognitive and creative processes involved in the transformation from two-dimensional (2D) to three-dimensional (3D) form. The Make/Use project centers on the development and testing of an embedded navigational system by which users can formulate a functional understanding of the form and construction of a garment and its opportunities for manipulation. It questions how the encoding of navigational clues and markers into a garment might aid in its facility for creation and modification by the user, aiming to enhance emotional investment and connection, and extending its functional life by providing embedded opportunities for alteration and visible repair.