Pockets full of wellness: E-textiles pockets to empower young women to discreetly recognise and manage their stress and mental wellbeing

This paper explores relationships between body, clothing and stress through e-textile wearables. It draws upon Attachment Theory and historic symbolism of women’s pockets as a secret form of self-empowerment. It investigates design-practice through prototyping as a methodology for detecting sub-conscious stress. The research gap identifies young women’s desire to manage their mental wellbeing privately and recognises opportunities to address this through e-textiles monitoring, harnessing the universality of pockets as everyday articles. It examines how unnoticed gestures of putting hands in pockets could offer an unobtrusive method for recognising and managing early indications of in-the-moment stress in non-clinical settings and offer a low-cost, accessible, alternative to existing smart wearable technologies. Two prototypes were created and evaluated in focus groups using a Technology Acceptance Model. Outcomes revealed that the e-textiles pockets were effective in discreetly managing wellbeing and beneficial in encouraging wider discussions around empowering women to take responsibility for personal wellbeing.