Yanqing Zhang is currently working as a PhD candidate at Mobile Life Center and the Department of Computer and System Science at Stockholm University, Sweden. She holds a master degree of Language and Culture at Linkoping University and a master degree of Fashion Studies at Stockholm University. Her research interests include aesthetic experience of digital technology, everyday fashion and technology, fashionable wearable, aesthetic theory and fashion theory.
PhD Thesis “Tech Fashion-ologies”
Abstract:
This thesis explores aesthetization in general and fashion in specific that occur in the design of digital technology and how we could design digital technology to account for the extended influences of fashion. It applies a combination of methods to explore the new design space at the intersection of fashion and technology. First, it contributes to theoretical understandings of aesthetization and fashion institutionalization that influence the design of digital technology. We show that there is an unstable aesthetization in mobile design and the increased aesthetization is closely related to the fashion industry. Fashion is emerged through shared institutional activities, which are usually in the form of action nets, in the design of digital devices. “Tech Fashion” is proposed to interpret such dynamic action nets of institutional arrangements that make digital technology fashionable and desirable. Second, through associative design research, we have designed and developed two prototypes that account for institutionalized fashion values, such as the concept of “outfit-centric accessory”. We call for a more extensive collaboration between fashion design and interaction design.
The thesis kapa could be downloaded. here
Juhlin, O., Zhang Y., Wang, J. and Andersson A., Fashion Intelligent Wearables – Apps and Services for Smart Watches, submitted to GI2016, December [Download PDF]
Zhang, Y. and Juhlin, O., The Life and Death of Great Finnish Fashion Phones— A Historical Periodization of Changing Aesthetics in Nokia Phone Design, accpeted to Journal of Mobile Media and Communication, 2016. Download
Zhang, Y. and Juhlin, O.,Fashion in Mobile Phone Design– The Emergence of Beautification, Desirability and Variation through Institutional Collaboration, in Fashion Practice: The Journal of Design, Creative Process & the Fashion Industry (Forthcoming) [Download PDF]
Juhlin, O., Zhang, Y., Sundbom C., Fernaeus Y. (2013) Fashionable Shape Switching: Explorations in Outfit-centric Design in Proceedings of CHI 2013, Paris, France [Download PDF]
Juhlin, O., and Zhang, Y.. Unpacking Social Interaction that Make us Adore – On the Aesthetics of Mobile Phones as Fashion Items. In Proceedings of ACM Mobile HCI 2011, Stockholm Sweden, ACM Press [Download PDF ]