Product Studio — Softgoods, LINK
Sophomore Spring Project 3 — AC, Ashika, May
The research phase of any soft goods project is, in my experience, the quiet engine of the work that follows. It is where assumptions are challenged, intuition is tested against precedent, and a vocabulary of form, material, and function begins to take shape. For our wearable project, this phase was a deeply collaborative effort between AC, May, and myself.
We were interested to start our research with the children’s school in CMU because their work places continuous physical, emotional, and material demands on a single person.
We visited the children’s school at 8:15am, when the school was about to start. Through observing the process of children arriving at the school, hanging backpacks onto the shelves, washing their hands, and interacting with the teachers, we were able to gain some basic understanding of how a typical day starts.
We noticed that teachers often kneel down or lean forward to talk to the children and that they also sit in the tiny chairs which are designed for the children. They would give emotional support to children when they’re reluctant to leave their parents or wash their hands. They seem to often reach out for clipboards, and we seldom see them holding phones.
Later in the afternoon, when school ended, we went back to talk to the teachers. Those conversations were extremely helpful as they brought up concerns that we wouldn’t directly see. We summarized the main pain points into three categories — physical, material, and emotional.
Physical
Chronic Knee Issues: His knees are in poor condition, and he frequently “blows out” his right knee.
Hip and Back Strain: Her hips and back are in bad shape; she sits on a block for support during circle time.
Squatting Instability: Whenever he is home, he practices squatting properly because he frequently falls at work when attempting to squat.
Equipment Complications: A wheeled chair was used after a foot was broken, and teachers who struggle to sit on children’s chair use it now.
Material
Storage of Personal Items: It is difficult to find a place for personal items, such as phones. Phones are often left on the tables or on the ground.
Note-Taking Limitations: They are not always able to write notes on a clipboard, and sticky notes are good replacements.
Accumulated Objects: They often go home with their pockets full of small trinkets.
Emotional
Kids can become upset easily sometimes → provide them certain items → write notes for them
Some kids can be really clingy → hold legs, touch head, play with retractable ID Badge Holders
More details in our presentation below.
Benchmarking: Locating the Project Within a Material Lineage
Before we drew a single line, we looked outward. Benchmarking, for our team, was less an exercise in cataloging competitors and more an attempt to position our wearable within an existing lineage of soft goods, to understand what had already been said, in fabric and form, about the body, utility, and adornment.
We approached this collectively. As a group, we delegated streams of research to surface a wide spectrum of references: tactical and ceremonial armor wearable; the structured pragmatism of the apron; the lightness and accessibility of the fanny pack; the asymmetry and intimacy of the side pack; and the historically gendered, surprisingly architectural language of the garter. Each typology offered a different stance on how a wearable can negotiate the body, how it can sit, cinch, hang, hold, or hover.
What I valued most about our benchmarking process was its honesty. We were not looking for products to imitate; we were looking for principles to learn from. We asked ourselves, repeatedly, what each reference did well and where it failed the wearer, physically, materially, and emotionally. Our client and user research had made clear that those three registers had to be considered in concert, and benchmarking allowed us to triangulate examples of each.
This stage also clarified our shared design language. We gravitated toward objects that resolved utility through restraint, pieces where every strap, seam, and pocket was justified, and where ornament emerged from construction rather than being applied to it. That conviction would become a quiet through-line in everything we made afterward.
INITIAL PAPER PROTOTYPING AND CONCEPTING
We moved into paper prototyping, a phase I find indispensable, because it forces a designer to commit. Each of us produced three prototypes, working within the constraints we had collectively defined. The result was a small library of forms: nine distinct propositions for what our wearable could become.
Critique was central to this stage. We were deliberate about creating space for open, generous, and rigorous feedback. We discussed adjustability, the logic of where a belt should sit on the body, how weight should be distributed, and the psychological difference between a wearable that closes around the wearer and one that rests on them. Through these conversations, we collectively moved away from a cross-body silhouette and toward a belt-and-garter system, a configuration that felt more grounded, more deliberately anchored, and more legible as an object of utility.
We also committed to an adjustable buckle as our closure mechanism. This was not a small decision. A buckle is both a functional element and a piece of visual punctuation; it determines how the wearer engages with the object every time they put it on, and it sets the tonal register of the entire piece.
What I appreciated most about paper prototyping was its accessibility. The medium is forgiving. Dimensions can be revised, proportions interrogated, and placements reconsidered without the inertia that comes with more committed materials. It allowed all three of us to think with our hands at the same speed at which we were thinking with our voices.
The physical aspects of working as a children’s school teacher were really important but we thought that engineering the best knee pads in the world might be hard to achieve with muslin fabric and the tight timeframe. The material and emotional aspects were something that we thought would be interesting and possible to address through a wearable.
After another conversation with the children’t school teacher, we narrowed our scope down to 3 major targeting functions.
First, we would like to provide the direct access to sticky notes and pens through the wearable. This is because the teachers mentioned that they’re always reaching for them during games, and just simply during conversations with the children. One of the examples they gave was that they would write down encouragements and recognitions for the children on sticky notes instead of just saying them because a sticky note provides something that the children can hold on to and remember of.
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Second, the teachers mentioned that many children can get clingy at times and that they would grab teachers’ legs, heads, and arms to gain a sense of attachment. This could sometimes become inappropriate and inconvenient for the teachers even though they really want to do their best to support the children and give security. They mentioned how some teachers have retractable ID strings and that the children like to grab on to it. This is better than the children grabbing the teachers’ body directly because it provides connection but at the same time independence. We wanted to also implement this sort of retractable system on the wearable to allow children to gain emotional support while encouraging independence. The storyboard below shows a retractable string with a sensory ball hooked on to, and that the children would be able to grab on to it when they needed. The teachers also have the freedom to unhook the ball when they want to.
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Third, during the second conversation with the teachers, they mentioned how some children in the school struggle to verbally reach out for help. This brought up the idea of having a “help button” — simply a sign on the wearable that allows children to signalize the need for a conversation. They also mentioned that the children all understand how an exclamation mark could indicate the need for help or an urgent situation happening. In the storyboard below, we illustrate a case of a child struggling but unable to verbalize the need for some support. The child simple points at or touch the help button, and this brings the attention of the teacher, who would be the one to start the conversation.
Pattern Sketches and Perspective Studies
To bring the proposal into clearer focus, I developed a pattern sketch from AC’s guide dimensions and a perspective view of the fanny pack on the iPad. The pattern sketch was a working drawing, an attempt to articulate, in flat geometry, how the object would be constructed before it ever met a sewing machine or a piece of leather. The perspective study, by contrast, was a communication tool: it gave the team and our stakeholders a single image through which the object could be understood three-dimensionally, in proportion to the body.
The final fabrication for the Link belt began with the creation of a final pattern. Refining the measurements of the previously sewn models, the pattern was made to show piece dimensions and seam allowances.This pattern was printed at scale and cut from the appropriate muslin and batting pieces. As many of the hardware and notions we had planned to use were color-specific, we chose to keep stitches a light blue color to match.
The sticky note pocket was the first thing sewn. Before assembling the pocket, we attached the help-button the teachers had asked for. This simple “button” is a soft layer of fabric with an exclamation point decal, placed in the corner of the bag closest to the child’s height. Following the critique from the teachers about wanting a more 3D feature to hold the sticky notes, this pocket is actually its own mini-bag with box corners to give it dimension.
Fabrication: Laser Cutting and 3D Printing
Once our SolidWorks files were finalized by May, I was responsible for translating them into physical components. This included sourcing materials, configuring laser cutter settings, and managing the 3D prints, most notably the PLAY tokens, the S Hook and the ladder buckle.
I took this part of the process seriously because the quality of a wearable lives in its hardware as much as in its silhouette. Producing the tokens and the ladder buckle myself allowed me to control that fidelity directly and to iterate quickly when something needed to be tightened or loosened.
AI-Assisted Ideation
I led the AI-rendered exploration of the fanny pack, using VizCom, Gemini, and ChatGPT to generate variations across material, color, and stylistic register. These were not final renderings they were instruments of inquiry. By holding the silhouette constant and varying surface qualities, I was able to test how the same object might read as utilitarian, as elevated, as athletic, or as soft and quiet, depending on its material vocabulary.
This kind of rapid, parallel exploration is something AI tools have made newly accessible to designers. Used thoughtfully, they expand the range of possibilities a team can consider before committing to a single direction. Used carelessly, they flatten taste. I tried to use them as the former, as a lens for sharpening our material decisions, not as a substitute for them.
Curating the Design Board
Alongside the conceptual work, I curated our design board in Adobe Illustrator. The role of a design board, as I understand it, is not to present every artifact a team has produced; it is to present the right ones, in the right relation to one another. Curation, then, is design, and I approached it with the same considerations I would bring to any composed surface.
I worked deliberately with narrative, hierarchy, and negative space. Photographs and references were filtered, cropped, and sequenced so that a viewer’s eye moved through the board the way a reader moves through a paragraph: from the broad framing of the project, to the typological references, to the prototypes, to the resolved direction. Negative space was treated as an active element, not a residual one. The aim was for the board to feel quiet but full, minimal in its visual rhetoric, but dense in the information it carried.
The nature of the pocket made it difficult to sew onto the main belt panel without moving (using our sewing machine), so we used Stitch-Witchery to secure it. The iron was helpful in making this pocket stand out and find a proper shape.
Once the pocket was attached, we sewed the main panel of the belt bag. This panel consisted of the two muslin sides and a batting layer in the middle to give it comfortable padding and a layer of stability. After this was assembled, we added the pen holder and the loop for the retractable toy. To account for the straps, a loop was sewn on the end of the panel to attach our S-hook fastener. On the opposite end, a piece of wide elastic and a button-hole panel was attached, allowing connection to the belts.
We then moved onto the belts. Both belts (thigh and waist) are made in the same way and can be swapped out to improve adjustability. These long strips were sewn in half, looped at one end, and sewn to our 3D-printed strap adjuster.
It was now time to assemble all of our parts. The belts feed through the button hole on the main panel and feed first over, then under, the appropriate plastic bars. Once properly connected, the belt bag can be worn by slipping the loop onto the S-hook fastener and adjusting accordingly for a comfortable fit. If the wearer prefers a thigh bag, they can follow these same instructions with the shorter thigh belt
AI ITERATIONs POST PHOTOSHOOT
The Photoshoot: Resolving the Object Through Image
Finally, I participated in the photoshoot that documented the finished work. We had agreed, as a team, that the photography needed to be minimal, clean, and quietly confident, a register that matched the design language we had developed throughout the process.
Looking back across the research phase, what I value most is how coherent it became, not because we planned it that way from the outset, but because the team trusted the process and trusted each other. We delegated without losing common ground. We critiqued without becoming precious. We let the references inform us without letting them dictate to us. And we let materials and prototypes have the last word, as they should in any soft goods practice.
