Micro Unit Part Five

Brief: Design a way for textile waste to reveal its hidden value.

Team Members: Luis Winkelbrandt, Nicole Shu, Molly Wensley, Amen Maheen, Vanashree Chowdhury, Niki Marathia, Jaime Santos Guerrero, and Lynn Zhong

Crazy Eights’s

As you can see, we have done an extensive amount of research. We were at a point where we needed to ideate. Tonchia suggested we try the crazy 8’s method. If we each come up with 8 ideas in 8 minutes, they can be wild and completely unstable, but potentially lead us to prototype something.

Because we have 9 people, we did crazy 3’s, 3 ideas in 3 minutes. We then explained our ideas and went back to see which ones we wanted to prototype.

Idea 1 - FrakenTowel: 

During this idea, we each took on a role as if the towel was undergoing surgery. This idea was to see the stained parts of the towel and either replace them with unstained parts of another towel or make a large ‘Frakentowel” out of all the stained pieces.

Idea 2 - Towel memories:

During this activity, we had participants on each side interacting with the sheet. This helps create a 3-dimensional memory of someone using the towel on the other side. As our value, it is to bring out the personality in each towel. We thought this interaction would create an embodied experience. 

Idea 3 - The life of a towel

Video - need to edit with clips and titles of what is happening
This idea stemmed from an idea about the reincarnation of a towel. Through this, we had Luis play the role of the towel and then perform the life cycles of a towel. While this idea was not something that fully connected to our hidden value, seeing the origin story of the towel does bring in perspective.

Idea 4 - Towel Chair

People tend to judge textile waste, call it dirty and gross, we wanted to flip that narrative and give the option to the towel to do the same. We played the arms of the chair, and when someone sat down on the chair, we spoke and judged the person. Pictured is our colleague, Vibhooti, testing out the chair as the towel (Vana and I) verbally judges her (Zhong, 2026). She said it made us feel weird and want to double-check how clean she was. (Vabooti was told that all ‘judgments’ were hypothetical, and she understood not to take them as reality)

Reflection of the activity

This activity was a big turning point for us; while some of these ideas felt silly, they really helped us start to prototype and pull our research together to create something. I was pretty stressed going into this week with no ideas, but even though these will not be our final ideas, it is a great starting point for our group.

Idtiating and Prototypeing

We decided to explore the towel memories idea. While we were all happy when we decided on this idea, it became clear that we all had completely different ideas on how to go about it, leading to some tension; nothing personal, it really just showed how passionate we all are about this project.

After a few hours of sketching, conversation, and compromise, we decided to start prototyping. 

We had taken a video using back lighting and a bed sheet to showcase the person or shadow using the towel. We then used a large projector to showcase that video directly on the towel.

This protyopey reveals a “biography,” the textile is no longer just a towel, it is a witness to labor and past usage, by animating the towel, it reconnects the discarded material with its past life (Boyle and Pearlman, 2024). 

Original Video: The colors from this original video change drastically; in this case, I believe it added to the overall feel of the video, but it is something to keep in mind when when film for the final product.

This render is an example of how we might want people to experience our interaction; we want them to feel like the towel so they empathize with the towel, just like in the 10-minute workshop with did last Friday.

Vana did material testing with embroidery string and wire to try to keep the towel in certain positions, while the towel is projected on.

Reflection of Prototyping

While difficult at the beginning of this stage, we really came up with an idea that we all feel is strong. While there were some healthy disagreements, I felt that it made our project concept stronger. Vanas material exoloretion help use add and element of storytelling and interaction that we hope to continue to add in our project.

Stain Stories Workshop

After we had some feedback about adding more personality through material, we decided to have a workshop-like activity in the park, where participants can come, embrace the towel, and try to understand the stories behind these textiles

We chose to conduct this research in Elephant Park, as it was a warm day but not too sunny. We knew people would be sitting in the park and willing to help us with this fun activity (Zhong, 2026).

Before we could do this activity, we had to take come of some administrative work. We created an information sheet that the participants could take home with them, a consent form, and a worksheet (we did not have them fill this out but we asked them the questions verbally). We has had to conduct a small risk assessment as were are working with external participants in a space outside of the university.

Materials and Set Up: We brought two picnic blankets, our hospitality textile waster provided by Fibre Labs, thread (color choices), needles, speaker with relaxing music, posters, examples, snacks, and water. We wanted our particpants to feel as if they were in a conformable and casual setting.

Vana, who has a background in fashion, would give our participants some guidance and examples of stitches they could do. After she was finished we asked them what they thought happened to the towel and 4/4 of the participants said make up, which does make up a majority of hospitality stains, but we go into an interesting conversation that after they are washed all stains start to look very similar, so it could be anything.

I was surprised at how much our participants wanted to interact with the stains; they were not scared of them in this setting, although they did say that if they saw a towel like this in a hotel that would not use it because they did not know what the stain was from. This almost contradicted itself as we had a towel with stains and a stranger whom they didn’t know, but they were open to exploring them outside of the hotel setting.

Quotes about why they made each thing

Next Steps:

While we did complete our brief, we still want to incorporate our project along with the embroidery. Putting these two together will be a challenge as one is bright and fun, and the other tells a more ominous story, but starting with the dark and bringing out the bright side of what textile was can mean, might make for a great combination.

References 

Boyle, E. and Pearlman, R. (2024) Making Things: Finding Use, Meaning, and Satisfaction in Crafting Everyday Objects. London: Hardie Grant Books.