Nomination
Lovewear is smart underwear that helps people of all abilities to self-explore and enhance their own intimacy and sexuality. Lovewear wants to empower the wearer through a tactile experience achieved by soft robotics, through the interaction with a connected ‘console’ pillow. The wearer can hug, cuddle, caress, press this interface as a surrogate for human contact or just explore its surface as they would explore their own body, facilitating gestures.
One of the main features of Lovewear is the integration of soft robotics, inflatable pockets embedded into the garment. A variety of professionals have been involved at different levels.
The co-design phase was supported by a psychologist. A questionnaire was prepared, translated into several languages and distributed. Feedback was collected, and some of the participants joined focus groups. The main objective of the collaboration was to understand how people with disabilities perceive and experience sex toys, their view on the use of new technologies in relation to intimacy, pleasure, and sex, and especially to understand the user needs and scenarios.
Credits
Project leaders: Emanuela Corti, Ivan Parati
Hub Wear It Berlin: Thomas Gnahm, Ioana Puscasu
Scientific partner: Fraunhofer IZM – Christian Dils, Max Marwede, Robin Hoske
Project assistants: Valeria Serra and Aesun Kim
Material testing: Empa – Agneszka Psikuta
Psychologist: Paola Tomasello
This project was partly funded by the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Grant Agreement No. 825647 (Re-Fream).
The authors would like to thank Simone Fanti and Max Ulivieri for the useful conversations on disability, Simone Majocchi for the suggestions about prototyping, Aesun Kim for conducting the welding and lamination experiments, Lars Stagun for 3D printing the pneumatic connectors, and Martin Haubenreißer for the manufacturing of the lamination tools.
Ivan Parati (IT) is an industrial designer and educator; his research focus on modularity, geometric tessellation, and digital fabrication. His vision on design and innovation is to offer everyone better living conditions, aiming at a cohesive and integrated multicultural society. Emanuela Corti (IT) is a researcher, product designer, and educator; her research encourages exploration at the intersection of product design and fashion. She believes in a user-centered approach and sees design as a problem-solving process that has the power to improve lives. In 2017 Emanuela and Ivan co-founded Witense with Alessia Moltani. They design and manufacture sensible innovative products and services with high technological content such as sensory objects and tools, design elements to improve the lives of people with or without disabilities and promote social inclusion through the application of developmental, behavioral, and learning methodologies.