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Topic

Exploring Text-based Support for Designing Weave Drafts

Department of Computer Science

Date & location

• Thursday, November 21, 2024

• 9:00 A.M.

• Virtual Defence

Reviewers

Supervisory Committee

• Dr. Sowmya Somanath, Department of Computer Science, University of Victoria (Supervisor)

• Dr. Charles Perin, Department of Computer Science, UVic (Member) 

External Examiner

• Dr. Lora Oelhberg, Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary 

Chair of Oral Examination

• Dr. Daler Rakhmatov, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UVic

   

Abstract

We present the design and evaluation of Textere — a tool that helps weavers use text inputs to design weave drafts for weaving. Our research lies at the intersection of two areas of research: (i) text-based design tools, and (ii) design tools in weaving.

Text-based design tools have been explored by researchers in various domains like garment design, 3D modeling, and data visualization, showing benefits for expanding creative possibilities, enabling rapid prototyping, and making design processes more accessible for a broader range of users. Motivated by such benefits, in our research we explore how text-based tools can help with designing weave drafts. Weaving is a design and production activity, wherein weavers map ideas, inspiration, or client requirements to visual elements like pattern, color, and weave structures to design a weave draft. The drafts are then physically produced using a loom. Weave drafts are designed before production, to convey what the appearance of the final product will look like. Design tools in weaving use different modalities, like audio and tactile, to make the design process more accessible, creative, and efficient— benefits that design tools in other domains have achieved using text support. Several text-based scenarios in weaving, require interpretation of words from text inputs. Yet, current text-based techniques and design tools in weaving are limited to mapping individual alphabets to specific weaving elements, or incorporating text as is in the weave draft. We extend this research space by exploring how weave drafts can be designed using meaning or interpretations of words.

We developed Textere, a text-based tool for designing weave drafts using the open source AdaCAD weaving platform. Using Textere, weavers can map text inputs to visual elements such as color, weave structure, and patterns based on meanings and interpretations. We curated the text-to-visual mappings used in our system from existing user studies in research, that describe how people associate words to visual elements. To evaluate Textere, we first used the evaluation-by-demonstration method, to produce four physical woven samples designed using our tool. Further, we conducted a qualitative study with 12 weavers to evaluate opportunities and limitations of using Textere, by comparing workflows to the tool we extended, AdaCAD, with no explicit text-to-visual support.

From our study we learned about the strengths and limitations of Textere. Informed by our results, we further discuss how text-based design tools like Textere can enable reflective decision making, generation and broadening of ideas, gaining different perspectives on what visual elements represent, and contribute to an ecosystem of tools for designing weave drafts. This thesis makes three contributions: i) a novel tool for designing weave drafts using text inputs, ii) empirical findings on the benefits and limitations of text-based interactions for designing weave drafts, and iii) a set of design implications for future text-based design technologies.