The Social Shirt: Memory On Your Sleeve

We have all experienced it: we go to introduce ourselves to someone new, only to learn that the person remembers us quite distinctly! How embarrassing! Or its milder cousin: we recognize someone but fail to recall their name, occupation, or the context in which we originally met them. Do we go re-introduce ourselves? How do we overcome the awkwardness of this scenario?

We designed the “Social Shirt” to help with exactly these problems. It presents relevant information to the user through an LCD embedded in the fabric of a shirt near the wrist, which we found may be referenced with minimal interruption during a normal conversation. We describe our research and design process in this video.