When words are not enough to express how we feel, the body often knows first. A racing heart, gripping toes, or a shift in posture can reveal our true feelings. Catlike is a Research through Design project that explores whether wearable technology can make these invisible physiological responses visible through material transformation. This research is inspired by piloerection, the involuntary rising of fur observed in cats during emotional arousal. Based on this biological reflex, the project develops two emotion-responsive wearable prototypes.
The headwear responds to heart rate variability detected at the earlobe, inflating soft robotic units at the center of social gaze. The footwear responds to plantar pressure changes detected by insole sensors, inflating units at the edge of social gaze. Both devices use pneumatic inflation of heat-sealed TPU chambers to create organic, three-dimensional shape change. The fabrication process produced three technical contributions grounded in hybrid craft: a non-destructive heat-sealing method that repurposes an unmodified consumer 3D printer through software-only G-code modification; a variable-size stacking technique for achieving perpendicular inflation movement; and a body-driven sensor layout derived from the wearer's own pressure mapping data. Both prototypes combine traditional haute couture techniques with digital fabrication.
Wearing the prototypes throughout development surfaced an unexpected finding: wearers discovered they could voluntarily activate the footwear by gripping their toes, while the headwear's heart rate signal remained outside their control. This contrast reframed signal voluntariness as a central design variable that shapes how much agency the wearer holds over the body's expression. The headwear's involuntary signal created a feeling of being passively monitored, while the footwear's semi-voluntary signal restored a sense of agency, producing playful, embodied engagement. Unintended sensory outputs, particularly the pump sound in the headwear, became unexpected triggers for emotional self-reflection. Technical failures that made the technology visible immediately redirected attention from emotion to device, confirming that concealment is a functional requirement rather than an aesthetic preference. Peers who encountered the wearables responded to them as fashion objects rather than medical devices, suggesting that fashion framing can reduce the stigma associated with body-monitoring technology.
This research contributes to the fields of wearable design, soft robotics, and fashionable technology by demonstrating that body location, signal voluntariness, and social framing are interconnected design variables that shape not only how emotion-responsive wearables function but how they feel to wear.

Keywords: emotion-responsive wearables, soft robotics, affective computing, Research through Design, biosignal sensing, fashionable technology, hybrid craft, social wearables

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