Redesigning the trans-disciplinary: Working across design, craft and technological boundaries to deliver an integrated wearable for cardiac monitoring

We analyse the mechanisms at play within a successful trans-disciplinary health and wellbeing project and seek to highlight key strengths within expert teams that facilitate innovative outcomes. These competencies are identified through the development of a necklace for longer-term cardiac monitoring created in a team encompassing designers, craftspeople, electronic engineers, and health practitioners. The paper argues that when the technological, craft and design disciplines collaborate seamlessly, from the beginning of the development process, truly human-focused devices and technologies can eventuate. A range of generalizable insights are highlighted that were critical to the success of this project including: seeking flow in the trans-disciplinary process; the ability to work within evolving electronic, craft and design constraints; openness to the co-realisation of problem and solution; creating new languages and tools to communicate across disciplines; and generating systems to archive the iterative process.