AiLoupe

AiDLab x Royal College of Art / UX designer and researcher

AiLoupe is a mobile application that uses image-based material recognition to identify textile materials against a purpose-built Sensory Materials Library. It helps designers identify, select, and source fabrics in the studio, at fabric expos, and while browsing unfamiliar material collections.

The project translates material knowledge into a visual interface. Instead of asking designers to search by technical names they may not know, AiLoupe starts from the camera: the designer scans a fabric, the model searches for visually similar materials, and the app presents a Material Data Card with sensory and sourcing information.

I led early-stage user research through Textile Assessment Studies, working with textile experts and international design-conference participants to understand how people describe fabric tactility, visual character, and use context. Those studies shaped the way material data is shown in the app.

I also developed a robotic data-collection pipeline that stretches target fabrics and captures standardized photos for the training dataset. This helped connect the physical behavior of textile samples with the image data needed by the recognition model.

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