Aesthetic Experience and Comfort: Garment Design Integrated with Movement Qualities, Dynamic Bodily Expression, and Emotion

Abstract

This research investigates comfort factors of users’ aesthetic experience, in particular emotional and aesthetic experiences that enhance wearability. The aim of the research is to develop concepts of movement-based interaction for inducing emotion, focusing on clothing as an interactive object. The more specific aim is to explore how to integrate movement qualities, bodily expression and emotion in garment design. The research utilizes the technique of scenarios to analyse the relationship between emotion and movement and garment. Garment has been developed for the participant as a prototype under the concept of shape change, ‘Transe-For-M-otion.’ The results indicate that, when wearing clothing in the context of comfort, the participant used her clothing to wrap or hold her body for the purpose of “protecting,” “hiding,” and “disguising” in insecure situations (feelings associated with relief and security), and conversely, for “self-expression” in secure situations (feelings associated with pleasure and enjoyment). In addition, the participant seemed to have her own ideas and gained great enjoyment by manipulating the garment in an interactive way with her body. The sense of movement, which refers to trace or the positional history of human motion, is closely related to space.