ReWear: Early Explorations of a Modular Wearable Construction Kit for Young Children

We present, ReWear, a modular 'plug-and-play' construction kit for retrofitting existing textiles (e.g., hats, scarfs, shirts) with interactive electronic and computational behaviors without sewing or the creation of code. While a range of well-designed e-textile toolkits exist (e.g., LilyPad), they cater primarily to adults and older children and present a high barrier of entry for some users. ReWear is part of a larger research agenda, called MakerWear, that is aimed at engaging younger children (ages 4-12) in the creative design, play, and customization of e-textiles/wearables. We discuss our initial ReWear prototype, contrast it with past work, and describe a preliminary evaluation.