Dr. Kristi Kuusk is a designer-researcher working on the direction of crafting sustainable smart textile services. She is looking for new ways for textiles and fashion to be more sustainable through the implementation of technology. In 2016 Kristi presented her PhD project on craft and sustainability qualities in smart textile services at the Eindhoven University of Technology in Designing Quality in Interaction research group. The related collaborative design work has been presented in various international exhibitions, shows and conferences. Her PhD work related to Augmented Reality on textiles was granted a patent in 2018 and commercialised by an industrial partner. Today Kristi works as a senior researcher in the textile futures direction at the Estonian Academy of Arts. In 2017 her project “Magic Lining” was awarded by the jury of VERTIGO to collaborate with ICT R&D projects with the goal of producing original artworks featuring innovative use-cases of the developed technologies. In 2018 her explorative children clothing brand Spellbound was selected by the jury of WORTH as one of the winning projects for transnational creative collaboration. In 2019 same award was given to another collaborative project— Wearable Play, Brooklyn fashion + Design Accelerator nominated Kristi as one of the 23 women leading the world of fashion technology, Interesting Engineering pointed her as one of the 9 Inspirational and Creative Fashion Tech Designers, and Women in Wearables as one of the Top 100 Women in Fashion Tech. For more see www.kristikuusk.com
Nesli Hazal Oktay is a designer-researcher and educator focusing on the impacts and interactions the emerging technologies could deliver. She holds an MA in Interaction Design from the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn and a Communications BA from the Galatasaray University in Istanbul. Since the academic year 2019/20, she is working as a visiting lecturer and also as a curriculum developer of the Interaction Design MA at the Estonian Academy of Arts. As an educator, she has led several industry collaborations, and her subjects are shaped around interaction design and speculative design. While continuing her journey as a design educator she is also studying at the Academy as a doctoral student. Her research interests include embodied, participatory, and speculative approaches to design. For more see www.neslihazal.com
Arife Dila Demir is a doctoral student at the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA). Her research interests are soma design, somaesthetics, aesthetics of bodily engagements, movement-based interactions, interactive textiles, critical and speculative design. Dila worked as a contractual lecturer at EKA (2019 autumn). She worked as an e-textile costume designer for the project executed between an artist and Tallinn University, funded by Vertigo STARTS Residency (2019-2020). She was an artist and researcher in residency in STARTS.EE Residency program which was executed by HCI group at the Tallinn University in collaboration with elektron.art. For more see https://dilademir.com/