Interactive products and wearable technologies have become prominent in the field of Industrial Design (ID). ID education has adapted to this shift by integrating information and communication technologies (ICTs), human-computer interaction (HCI), and interactive product design criteria into the ID curricula. The design of wearable technologies also requires the ID student to master working with the constraints of the human body while incorporating form factors, enabling technologies, and interaction modalities (Wang, Bryan-Kinns & Yan, 2015) into their design process.

This paper presents a summary and analysis of a short-term workshop founded on the “learning by making” strategy (Rollins, 2013). The workshop saw students design “Circuit T-shirts” with interactive features. The students participating in the workshop had little prior experience with interactive technologies. They explored conductive and soft materials, designed an interactive gesture with a graphical circuit on a T-shirt, presented the final product in a runway format, and accompanied their presentation with a short video. This paper summarizes student design outcomes by analyzing their interview responses together with assessment by the authors during and after the workshop.