With my defense ended a journey that had started with building an LED top-hat years before and the question what would happen if others could remotely control my appearance. In Finland, doctoral graduates receive a top hat as a symbol of their degree, which closes this cycle also metaphorically. My doctoral research investigated how technology might alter our everyday attire and how this will change the way we interact with each other. Imagine clothing and accessories that not only give comfort and reflect your style but respond to your emotions, social contacts, and online media.

Will we in the future wear Memes? Nordic students already do. Despite two decades of HCI research on social wearables, we are yet to see widespread adoption. In our generative design research, we investigate the use of social wearables in the students’ practice of wearing and adorning boiler suits. We found a variety of social interactions, including spamming and digital memes, as a concept for designers.

In a week-long workshop we – Patrycja Zdziarska, Walther Jensen and me – designed Hooze: A Kinetic Fashion Accessory for Touch and Play. We presented our work on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction 2019.

In a year-long study, we observed an agile software development team to understand how it establishes security practices following a security consultancy. This included in-situ observation at a security workshop and interviews with developers and management. In our long paper for CSCW 2017 we found that the consultancy helped build understanding, but was not sufficient to shift organizational routines.