Vigour

A knitted cardigan that keeps people active

Vigour is a Product Service System that enables geriatric patients, physiotherapists and family to gain more insight into the exercises and progress of a rehabilitation process. It is a knitted, long-sleeved cardigan with integrated stretch sensors made of conductive yarn and an accompanying iPad application which monitors the movements of the upper body and can give sound feedback. The garment can be worn all day and thereby gather a large amount of data.

Vigour introduction, video by Joe Hammond.

Sound as motivation

Next to this the garment can be worn when executing rehabilitation exercises and give feedback to the wearer by making sounds on an iPad application. For example: the further a particular sensor is stretched, the higher the pitch of the piano or the increase in volume of the voice in a song. Vigour’s accompanying iPad app uses this data to give direct feedback to both the sweater’s wearer and the physiotherapist, helping them both visualise progress. It also allows them to customise each sensor’s sound and sensitivity, providing another way to track effort in each targeted area. The project has a high social value, since it advances ways of communication between geriatric (Alzheimer’s) patients and their therapists, and encourages interaction and movement.

Sound feedback of Vigour, app by Lisa Vork, sound design by Silvin Willemsen

Vigour prototype

Vigour is designed in the form of a garment that can be worn as a normal cardigan. The reason for this is that the garment is more likely to be accepted by the target group (older adults and seniors). Family and caregivers do not like the stigma of a patient that a garment with a strong medical look puts on the wearer. It is important that the person wants to wear it, first of all because it is comfortable and also fits their identity and is beautiful, and additionally has the other features you expect from a smart garment. The sensor areas themselves are directly knitted into the fabric during the knitting process. There are in total four sensors integrated into the textile of the garment: two in the lower back area, to measure back movement (bend of the back), and two stretch sensors under the arms to measure arm movement.

The sensors are knitted in the fabric, the casings contain the electronics

Details

Designers: Martijn ten Bhömer, Pauline van Dongen, Oscar Tomico
Partners: De Wever, Metatronics, Unit040, Savo BV, TextielMuseum TextielLab
Students: Annelie van Lankveld, Daisy van Loenhout, Lisa Vork & Silvin Willemsen
Materials: Wool, Elastomeric Bemis adhesive, Conductive Bekinox yarns, Custom electronic CRISP PCB modules, Elastic Ohmatex cabling, 3D printed casings, Battery
Techniques: Stoll knit & wear knitting, 3D printing, Overlocking, Sewing, Soldering, Laminating, Programming
My role in collaboration: Initiator of the project, User-centered design and validation, Integration of textile and technology & Interaction design
Publications: Details have been published in various papers (ten Bhömer et al., 2013; ten Bhömer & van Dongen, 2014; Brouwer et al., 2015; ten Bhömer et al., 2016; ten Bhömer, 2016; ten Bhömer et al., 2025)

Photos

A family member is helping a patient with rehabilitation exercises. Photo by Wetzer & Berends.

Vigour in use during physical therapy exercises, photo by Joe Hammond.

Application to project the sound and calibrate the sensors before use, application by Lisa Vork.

Vigour v1, first prototype of the garment.

Knitting program of the knit-and-wear machine.

Detail of the fabric of Vigour, photo by Joe Hammond.

References

2025

From monitoring to proactive healthcare: Cases exploring embodiment and AI in smart textile design

Martijn ten Bhömer, Qi Wang, Ziqian Bai, and 3 more authors

The Design Journal, Jun 2025

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This paper examines the integration of smart textiles and artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare, focusing on the shift from monitoring to proactive interventions. Through a series of case studies, it identifies generic design challenges and opportunities for proactive healthcare applications and explores design qualities within Smart Textiles, Data & AI, and Embodiment to guide future practices. Findings emphasize the strategic integration of sensors within textile structures, enabling embodied feedback mechanisms, enhancing user engagement and acceptance. Additionally, the study underscores how participatory design approaches can foster long-term health behaviors, reduce burdens on healthcare systems, and enhance patient autonomy by actively involving users and healthcare professionals in the design process. While this work identifies new avenues for proactive and holistic healthcare solutions, it also addresses challenges related to AI-driven data handling, privacy, and ethical concerns, reinforcing the need for transparent, secure, and ethically responsible practices as these technologies advance.
@article{from-monitoring-to-proactive-healthcare, title = {From monitoring to proactive healthcare: Cases exploring embodiment and AI in smart textile design}, author = {{ten Bhömer}, Martijn and Wang, Qi and Bai, Ziqian and Jiang, Mengqi and Qu, Nianchong and Wu, Zhen}, year = {2025}, month = jun, journal = {The Design Journal}, publisher = {Routledge}, pages = {1--24}, doi = {10.1080/14606925.2025.2512320}, }

2016

Designing ultra-personalised embodied smart textile services for well-being

Martijn ten Bhömer, Oscar Tomico, and Stephan A G Wensveen

In Advances in Smart Medical Textiles, Oxford, Jan 2016

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Smart textiles are becoming more integrated with service ecosystems that go beyond the current horizontal textile value chain. This will extend the material and tangible properties of smart textiles to intangible properties from services, such as the ability to measure and store data and change the functionality of a material over time. It is thus becoming more urgent for textile developers and service providers to work closer together to develop these types of smart textile services (STSs). This opens up a vast field of opportunities for textile developers, product designers, and service designers to combine their disciplines to develop close-to-the-body applications in the area of well-being. The role of the body, the degree of personalisation, and the prototyping process provide opportunities for ultra-personalisation within these new types of embodied STSs. We present an overview of commercially available STSs based on these three elements. We then analyse three STSs that we have developed in the context of well-being. We advocate that within the exemplified STSs the service interface is strongly connected to the bodily senses of the people using the service. This connection is further specified with three notions of ultra-personalisation: personalisation through the material properties, the design of the garment, and the programming of the interactions with the wearer.
@incollection{designing-ultra-personalised-embodied-smart-textile-services, title = {Designing ultra-personalised embodied smart textile services for well-being}, author = {{ten Bhömer}, Martijn and Tomico, Oscar and Wensveen, Stephan A G}, year = {2016}, month = jan, booktitle = {Advances in Smart Medical Textiles}, location = {Oxford}, publisher = {Woodhead Publishing}, pages = {155--175}, doi = {10.1016/B978-1-78242-379-9.00007-4}, editor = {van Langenhove, L}, }
Designing embodied smart textile services: The role of prototypes for project, community and stakeholders

Martijn ten Bhömer

Feb 2016

Doctoral dissertation

Abs Bib PDF Website

The age of wearables has been a prophecy for decades, with visions such as the disappearing computer bringing technology everywhere around us. Previously rigid and hard technology is being transformed and shaped to the body, for example in wristbands, activity trackers and glasses. This raises the question as to how close-to-the-body products and services can become truly meaningful to people’s lives, and more closely connected to our bodily experiences than the current generation of wearable technology. Technological developments in textiles and technology make it possible to augment the existing qualities of textiles with sensing capability (for example, measuring touch, stretch, movement, light, and sound) and actuation capabilities (for example, changing heat, color, light, and shape). By combining intangible properties from services (for example, the ability to measure and store data or change the functionality of a material over time), it becomes possible to tailor smart textiles to individual users. Smart Textile Services are a type of Product-service Systems (PSS’s) where the value for the end-user is achieved by combining an interactive physical component (the smart textile) with intangible components, such as digital data or interpersonal relations. The influence of embodiment, emotions and the phenomenological significance of ways of expression on the service are aspects not widely recognized in service design because service research has always focussed on an information process approach. Both the design process and the result tend to be disembodied, because of limited awareness of the corporal, situated and social elements.
@misc{designing-embodied-smart-textile-services, title = {Designing embodied smart textile services: The role of prototypes for project, community and stakeholders}, author = {{ten Bhömer}, Martijn}, year = {2016}, month = feb, note = {Doctoral dissertation}, type = {phdthesis}, editor = {Hummels, Caroline and Tomico, Oscar and Kleinsmann, M S}, institution = {Eindhoven University of Technology}, }

2015

Assessing Smart Textile Services using Bodily Knowledge of Tangibility

C E Brouwer, Martijn ten Bhömer, Oscar Tomico, and 1 more author

In Proceedings of the 5th Participatory Innovation Conference, the Hague, the Netherlands, May 2015

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When combining the tangible properties of Smart Textiles (such as the hand of the fabric) with the intangible properties from services (such as dynamic properties and business models), the result can be considered a Smart Textile Service. Practitioners in a healthcare context are used to an embodied approach to examine and improve the bodily abilities of their clients. Therefore, developing the intangible components of Smart Textile Services for healthcare can introduce difficulties in a participatory design process. In this article, we investigate how embodied interactions with prototypes of service interfaces help to assess not only tangible but also intangible aspects of Smart Textile Services. The analysis concerns a design meeting that took place during the multi-stakeholder process to develop the smart cardigan and service “Vigour” for people with dementia. During this meeting, the current state of the development of the Smart Textile Service is assessed by two physical therapists, a manager of the eldercare organisation, and two designers. One of the main findings is that the validation of assessments takes place by relating the body to tangible objects, imagined tangible objects, imagined future tangible objects, and imagined intangible objects. We argue that bodily behaviour provides the basis for participants to agree on favourable or non-favourable tangible and intangible aspects of a design.
@inproceedings{assessing-smart-textile-services, title = {Assessing Smart Textile Services using Bodily Knowledge of Tangibility}, author = {Brouwer, C E and {ten Bhömer}, Martijn and Tomico, Oscar and Wensveen, Stephan A G}, year = {2015}, month = may, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 5th Participatory Innovation Conference}, location = {the Hague, the Netherlands}, }

2014

How Was it Made? Vigour

Martijn ten Bhömer and Pauline Dongen

ACM Interactions, Sep 2014

DOI Bib PDF Website

@article{how-was-it-made-vigour,
  title = {How Was it Made? Vigour},
  author = {{ten Bhömer}, Martijn and van Dongen, Pauline},
  year = {2014},
  month = sep,
  journal = {ACM Interactions},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
  volume = {21},
  number = {5},
  pages = {12--13},
  doi = {10.1145/2641396},
  issn = {1072-5520},
}

2013

Vigour: Smart Textile Services to Support Rehabilitation

Martijn ten Bhömer, Oscar Tomico, and Caroline Hummels

In Proceedings of the Nordic Design Research Conference, Jun 2013

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“Vigour” is a garment that shows the possibilities of smart textile services for geriatric rehabilitation exercises. It is the result of a collaborative design process between a design researcher, three therapists, an eldercare manager, a textile developer and an embedded systems designer. Vigour embodies the knowledge that was accumulated during the collaborative design process. We contribute to the theme of experimentation in design research by showing the value of experimentation in a participatory setting through the iterations leading to the final garment. Further, we will briefly describe three of the steps that lead to the final prototype.
@inproceedings{vigour-smart-textile-services-to-support-rehabilitation, title = {Vigour: Smart Textile Services to Support Rehabilitation}, author = {{ten Bhömer}, Martijn and Tomico, Oscar and Hummels, Caroline}, year = {2013}, month = jun, booktitle = {Proceedings of the Nordic Design Research Conference}, editor = {Brandt, Eva and Ehn, Pelle and Degn Johansson, T and Hellström Reimer, M and Markussen, M and Vallgårda, Anna}, venue = {Copenhagen, Denmark}, date = {2013-06-09}, }