Design breakdown
Innitial challenges
One of the biggest challenges we underwent when starting this project was making the layout cohesive. What direction do we put the graphics, what way do we need to move our arm to show this idea, is this visible to the user, etc. Now, we believe we've done great with the placement, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement. We will always strive to just that, and with each version we hope to improve access, especially for those with limited movement capabilities.
Communication Breakdown
To provide accessibility to communication in the best way possible, we broke down the way we need to communicate into three distinct categories. Those categories are Pleasantries, Emotions, and Feelings. With these three categories we found ways to communicate by using them individually, or in conjunction with each other to express complex topics. But let us explain in a bit more detail, first lets start with the base concept, Pleasantries.
The overall design of the MK 1 hoodie, our classic version.
When we first were looking at designing these hoodies, we had seen some basic shirts with blocks of text that you could say work to communicate, but they were very limiting. Still even then, they could seem harsh with firm yes or no and not a way to feel like you can speak gently. We wanted to make sure that speaking kindly to others was a core part of our hoodie and one you can easily access. The manner of communication we settled on for this was having your arm out in front of you says yes or no, and hold your arm out says please or thank you. We also include without additional charge, three languages for these pleasantries, English, Spanish, and Japanese.
With this layout, you can say the words individually, or you can combine them in various ways. Such as saying "No thank you." And you can stop there, or you could go further and add on the current emotion you feel to expand the sentence more.
Combined with pleasantries from above, the emotion scale becomes a very powerful tool on the hoodie and is important enough to have its own category. While emotion scales are not an uncommon idea, implementing them onto the upper arm provides a constant accessible way to tell others your mood that is not distracting in every day wear.
The emotion scale is designed so it can be used on its own, or you can combine your mood with the above sentence to expand on your emotions. So with this emotion scale you can communicate, "No thank you, I'm upset," and the expression be very clear to those around you. But our communication still doesn't end there, we have a last category to go over, feelings. Just as with the last two categories, this provides yet another powerful tool for the wearers of our sweatshirts.
Feelings are often quite abstract concepts that can already be difficult to communicate and convey. They can also be hard to tell others when you need to because we just don't quite know what to say. With our sweatshirts, we aim to provide easy options to showcase your current feelings. Now we have all three of our categories and can formulate our complex thoughts all the way. Then we can express them all on our sweatshirt without needing speak a single word. You could easy communicate, "No thank you, I'm upset because I'm hungry."
Final THoughts
This design breakdown shows just how you can communicate your feeling of being a bit hangry, and that’s only one option. As is there arer dozens of options and hopefully even more as we continue to develop and evolve our product. All of this will to ultimately the ability we want to provide, and that is each and every user of our sweatshirts being able to communicate as easily as possible. With being able to say what is on your mind without ever feeling forced to speak a word allows for everyone to gain more confidence and feel more safe in the world around them.
Even as we continue to evolve, this classic model and has already gotten into the hands of dozens of people in our local area. It is amazing to see kids and adults who use these either in part or in full. It can be so much more, and we cannot way to see how you too can Speak As Yourself.