
Enabling E-Textile Microinteractions - rbinv
https://ai.googleblog.com/2020/05/enabling-e-textile-microinteractions.html
======
cjjp
At first I misread that comment as "e-textile microtransactions". I thought my
shirt pocket was about to become pay-per-use.

~~~
PurpleRamen
You are not alone. I first read it as "E-Mail microtransactions", then "E-Mail
Microinteractions". Just now I realize it's not about E-Mails. Not sure If I
should be happy or sad now.

------
joezydeco
Why does Google keep fooling around with fabrics? This keeps coming back every
few years and then disappears again.

[https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/6/16428338/google-atap-
levi...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/6/16428338/google-atap-levis-
project-jacquard-denim-smart-jacket-review)

~~~
blululu
I think this is a fascinating question and I don't honestly have an answer to
it. There is a lot of interest in the broader HCI community around wearable
tech, embodied tech, and ubiquitous computing. Naturally Google - a major
employer of HCI researchers - has a lot of people who are into this sort of
thing. But that just pushes the answer back to why is the HCI community so
into this? My best guess is that the HCI research does not really have a
central canon or paradigm (a lot of people come from other departments (CS,
Psychology, ...)). Consequently the community is very open minded about what
constitutes valid research and creative expression and potential valued more
than practicality.

~~~
joezydeco
I've spent some time in the HCI community, even going to a SIGCHI once, and my
take is that input methods are a very wide open field. So it's easy to get
work here.

Some of it can be downright sexy, and giving good demo gets you more prestige
and money. I'm sure GATAP is no different.

What puzzles me is that we're certainly headed down new roads that other
groups have paved already, like two-way audio interfaces and AR/VR. Tactile is
great, but also presents a huge gap in affordances. Any interface you need to
train for is a failed one. Anyone with an AirPod and Siri has moved a
generation past a clickable headphone button. So why keep pursuing a one-
dimensional interface method like a hoodie string?

I get that there's an application here in decoding waveforms using "AI" to
translate signals to gestures. And maybe that's the point.

------
natas
Wont take long before high stake poker players find some applications; I
wonder what those would be.

------
scottishcow
This is interesting! Seems we can make _everything_ interactive these days
with a simple mix of electronics and ML. Discoverability might be an issue
though, I already have trouble remembering all the gesture combinations on the
Macbook trackpad.

It’s also not clear if the ML-based classification scheme can handle the vast
individual differences among the general public, in real-life scenarios.
(Wasn't this why Motion Sense on Pixel 4 wasn’t as precise as initially
expected?) Performance may take a further hit with wear and tear, if these are
embedded in clothing like hoodie drawstrings.

------
jasonlfunk
The video of this in action is pretty cool.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=pbAvY6bwZD8](https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=pbAvY6bwZD8)

------
arkitaip
We're witnessing the birth of a new category of cybernetic languages (smart
gestures? tech-tactile? techtile?). Glad that Google is doing their HCI
research to figure out how the tech is bounded by the human body. I imagine
that at some point, you could add vibrations as another information channel to
supplement sight and hearing.

How long before we see competing gesture languages? How long before there's an
industry standard?

------
grawprog
I don't know why, but it took me until about halfway through the article to
realize it was micro-interactions not micro-transactions. My brain just
automatically read it as the latter.

I was picturing this dystopian scenario where clothes would be paid for
through microtransactions using some kind of network aware fibers that would
automatically charge your bank account per use or something.

