STS project— CRISP Magazine # 1
An inspirational test bed enables textile developers to understand the multi-disciplinary opportunities and challenges of creating Smart Textile Product Service Systems.
knitting things together Martijn ten Bhömer
One major challenge in developing a PSS, is getting the production partners involved.
Martijn ten Bhömer’ s project for Smart Textile Services is a clear illustration of the designer’ s entrepreneurial approach. In it, he has teamed up with several local companies to develop a service that is designed, produced and distributed locally. Many of these companies are moving away from mass production towards smaller series and more innovative solutions. This also requires moving away from the vertical, hierarchical business style towards a more horizontal network of open innovation.
A‘ normal’ service design project often begins by making a clear blueprint of everything that the service in the end ought to have. With that blueprint, you start looking for partners who can deliver the individual parts of the service and try to draw them into your big plan. In this bottom-up approach, though, you start from the knowledge and facilities partners have and together examine how these can be combined in separate design directions. Unlike a pre-made blueprint that gets filled in during development, it is instead a process that you go through with the partners and something that develops over time.
Although there is no blueprint, this does not mean that the process in unstructured. Martijn’ s project follows a Growth Plan that consists of three phases. The first phase, the Incubation phase, revolves around creativity, innovation and exploration. Each stakeholder brings their current knowledge, facilities and innovation potential into a test bed used to create inspiring prototypes, combining textiles and electronics. These prototypes are typically one-offs to be‘ tested’ with one person.
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