(^24) The Official Raspberry Pi Projects Book raspberrypi.org/magpi
n her website, Clodagh
O’Mahony describes
herself as a “multi-
disciplinary designer with
experience in product, graphic, and
UX/UI design, as well as illustration
and media production.”
Having completed her BSc in
Product Design and Technology at
the University of Limerick, Clodagh
went on to study for her master’s
degree at the same establishment,
this time in Interactive Media. This
is where the Raspberry Pi comes in.
For her thesis project,
Clodagh created a dress and an
accompanying website to comment
on the progression of social media
interaction – the idea that it’s
Projects SHOWCASE
Clodagh’s
documented
the entire
process
The dress was
redesigned
to improve
comfort and
functionality
The Raspberry
Pi records
touch and
keywords
It then uploads
this data to its
SQL database
Conductive
thread was
used to create
‘sectors’
Quick
Facts
All components are located
at the back of the dress
QBEE
The aim was for a dress that
would still be fashionable
and comfortable, despite
the additional tech
O
Different colours represent
touch to different body
parts, recording this data
to the Raspberry Pi
CLODAGH O’MAHONY
Holding an MSc in Interaction Design,
Clodagh is in charge of FABTABLAB in
Utrecht, the Netherlands. She is also a
master rower and archer.
clodaghomahony.com
A SPECULATIVE
SOCIAL MEDIA
PLATFORM
getting harder and harder to ‘hide’
on platforms such as Facebook
and Twitter due to the sheer
amount of personal information
we pump into our timelines.
Whereas a person could once
create an entirely new persona
through the predominantly text-
based interaction of blogs and
chat rooms, we now live a more
visual existence online. Photo,
video, and emojis have replaced
textual communication, adding
more ‘face’ to the name, and
inevitably adding more reality.
With this in mind, Clodagh set out
to design “a wearable connected
platform that introduces what
is sold as a ‘purer’ form of social
media. The quantitative data
means users would have to
go to extraordinary lengths
to misrepresent their lives,
thereby making its information
more reliable than that of
its competitors.”
Clodagh created a corporation
named ‘QBee’, an abbreviation of
Queen Bee, with the associated
honeycomb theme playing a
significant part in the look of
both the dress and website. This
corporation, if given true life, would
provide a range of wearable tech –
similar to her dress – that would
allow for the recording of social
interaction data, updating it to the
wearer’s online QBee account.
Clodagh O’Mahony’s university thesis project records touch
and voice data to award points for social interaction