Caleb Sayan of Textile Hive has worked tirelessly to create an interactive digital space robust enough to represent the more than 40,000 textile pieces collected within the Andrea Aranow Archives. In this interview, we talk to Caleb about his platform development process, the intersections of analog and digital, iterative design practices, and the future of digitization/digital tools/digital archives. Andrea Aranow (who is Caleb’s mother) has not only collected but also created textiles since the 1960s. A remarkable clothier and teacher, Andrea’s life long work is now able to be seen through a digital lens, thus allowing for broader contributions to the world of research, design and art.

Let’s start with a little bit about you and your mother, who is the “Andrea Aranow” of the Andrea Aranow Textile Design Collection. How did you come to this project? How did you both determine that a digital platform would enhance the archive in its entirety?

My mom Andrea Aranow is a badass and the soul of textile design collection we house at Textile Hive. She began her career in fashion in New York city in the late 1960’s, making patchwork leather and snakeskin clothing for socialites and musicians like Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix. For a change of scenery she took a vacation trip to Peru which set her on a new path and to eventually start documenting traditional textiles and making collections for museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum, and The Royal Scottish Museum. Her five years in Peru were followed by a few in London, then one in China and three more in Japan. In 1987  she returned to New York to start a new business: Andrea Aranow Textile Documents, which for twenty-five years sold handmade and antique swatches and artwork as inspiration for new product design.  

Thus, I grew up in many countries, but completed my studies with a BA in political science from Trinity College. I joined Textile Documents in 2003 to help manage the business and collection after working as a graphic designer and continued there for five years,  building the business and expanding the clientele.  

In the fall of 2008 I decided to leave New York for the Pacific North West. In early 2009 Andrea decided to close down Textile Documents, I proposed the idea of digitizing the collection to find new audiences and use cases.  The ultimate goal of digitization project was to place the physical collection. 

The collection seems to stem from Andrea Aranow’s specific interests in varying clothier techniques, as well as your keen digital design eye. From dyeing to needlework, from texture to print, the textiles are so inherently tactile. In past interviews you’ve mentioned wanting to capture that materiality, or at least not lose it in the digitization and digital display process. How did this factor into your UX and platform design?

When we began building the prototype visual database for our collection we had the goal of creating a fully integrated system. It wasn’t meant to replace the physical collection but to augment it. The collection is inherently visual and its subject matter highly tactile. Historically the collection has been used by designers, so it needed to be highly visual. However, there is no way to replace the tactile nature of the physical collection digitally, so the approach was to focus on the strengths of the digital capabilities which include search, data and content visualizations and scale/distribution.

Were there any pieces or eras that were particularly difficult to capture, describe, or digitally represent? 

Actually, I think the hardest part of the collection to document was my mother, how she sees and relates to the material in the collection. We have a group of curated collections in the digital app that she created and narrates, but obviously we can’t recreate her in the database. While the collection is impressive on its own, it is much more compelling when viewed through her perspective. Recently, she was visiting Portland and we held an event at Textile where she pulled a group of textiles that she was particularly responding to that day. The audience was captivated.

Can you speak to some of the unique elements of the user design and describe your methodology behind building those components?

I think some of the most unique elements in our user design came in later iterations of developing the database. One of these elements is our studio view which is both a user facing tool for exploring the collection through a schematic of our physical space; its other use is an administration tool that allows us to find where an item is located for retrieval or to be put back. Though not a methodology per se, this element functions as an administrative tool that we use to retrieve and put back objects, while also being a user facing tool for exploration. 

"The studio view binds the physical and digital parts of the collection and also makes it bi-directional starting with either the digital and then to the physical or vice versa. We needed this tool to administer the collection but we designed it in such a way that it could be an exploration tool for the user."

In addition to the beautiful visual representation of each object, the search functionality offers an array of useful facets. Can you discuss the metadata schema and taxonomic design? What is unique to textiles when thinking about search and discovery?

Developing our metadata schema and cataloging our collection consistently across a group of six was a challenge. We explored some pre-existing schemas like the Getty’s CDWA but found they did not fit well for our subject matter because they considered textiles in the context of art where we consider them in the context of design. Before starting the project I visited the Textile Museum and learned about a textile thesaurus that they had published which was helpful in creating our taxonomy. For our collection, I wanted to describe not only the objective information about each piece but also the visual (subjective attributes) that designers use when searching for patterns. Our taxonomy ended up having two main branches and each piece was effectively cataloged twice, once physically to capture material, technique etc. and once visually to capture the pattern layout and style etc. For the subjective branch we had to create a data dictionary to define our concepts and with examples that our group of catalogers could reference. All this information and other administrative documents were centralized in an internal wiki we created

How do you conceptualize a platform like this in the very beginning? Did you brainstorm/concept map/or anything similar?

I think it came over time. As we were going through our digitization and cataloging phases I was definitely using and evaluating lots of databases that housed visual materials. I was also using many online consumer tools and deconstructing the elements that I liked and didn’t. At the time mobile applications were taking off and visual tools like Pinterest were emerging. When we began the software phase of our project we created a document outlining what we wanted to build. We started with WHY we wanted to build the visual database, its purpose, then the experience we wanted users to have, and finally the functional requirements. If I remember correctly there was about a two to three month period of research, refinement and meetings before work began building the software platform. 

Was the teaching base component intended from the beginning? How did you develop that idea and what prompted the design behind that part of the site?

The idea of knowledge base stemmed from the experience of using the wiki and how imperfect it was. If we had had an integrated knowledge base while cataloging the collection it would have made the work much easier. Unfortunately there was no way to have the information contained in the wiki in our cataloging software. Once we had control of building our own software I wanted to integrate the knowledge base, directly providing definitions of terms and videos contextualizing the historic, economic, and social meaning behind the textiles. 

Do you use any analytics to gauge your users? Usability testing?

Not at first. Originally the database was designed as a concept to present the vision of how both the physical and digital collection could be used. The goal in digitizing our collection was to find a new permanent home for it. After not being able to find the right home for the collection, we decided to launch Textile Hive online independently, based on the interest in accessing the collection digitally we heard while presenting the collection at various conferences. 

The transition from inward prototype to outward facing was rough, and had I anticipated that change earlier I would have done more user testing as we were developing our software. We had some usability testing and a beta period for friends and extended family beforehand but it wasn’t until after we launched that we received the critical feedback we needed. Three years later, I finally feel like we have a robust experience and feature set.

Can you speak to some of the unique elements of the user design and describe your methodology behind building those components?

I think some of the most unique elements in our user design came in later iterations of developing the database. One of these elements is our studio view which is both a user facing tool for exploring the collection through a schematic of our physical space; its other use is an administration tool that allows us to find where an item is located for retrieval or to be put back. Though not a methodology per se, this element functions as an administrative tool that we use to retrieve and put back objects, while also being user facing tool for exploration. User and administrative tools don't usually overlap in most software. When possible I think walls between what is administrative and not should come down, doing so opens up new possibilities and also insures the same design polish for all parts of the interface.

How did digitizing the materials change your view of the physical objects themselves? Do you see benefits to both media (physical and digital) in regards to research, education and art inspiration?

Despite being a digital proponent, I find myself an advocate for the role of the physical more than ever these days. Digital-only interaction and the convenience it affords in research can lead to laziness, in my opinion. The physical object will always be the primary source material to me and any digital component a secondary source, best used to augment interaction with materials as opposed to replacing them. However in the case where you can’t access the physical, the digital undoubtedly has significant value. For me, I see the collection we house at Textile Hive as one integrated collection both physical and digital. We are somewhat unique that we we have a one to one representation since everything we house has been digitized and cataloged. Most museum collections, to me, are not integrated because you can’t flow between the physical and digital very easily. Their experiences have not been designed to be used together, limiting their impact. 

What freedoms did you have by building this digital collection outside of a large institution? Were/Are there any challenges to this independence?

Good question! I think inherently there are a lot of trade-offs between working independently or within a larger organization. The benefits are speed, streamlined decision making process, and the flexibility to adapt quickly as you learn more. Time is one of the biggest enemies of any digitization project because technology changes so quickly that you can get a in a perpetual cycle of incompletion.  Additionally, on more than one occasion I’ve seen digitization projects be unsuccessful because the people who put together the plan are not the people who ultimately execute them. Having continuity in the vision and execution of any digitization project is critically important from my perspective, whether it be an independent or institutional project. Although it was an independent project, I had a lot of help. There were with over thirty people making significant contributions throughout and I also learned so much by attending conferences (institutional) and meeting professionals from within industry. On the other side, being independent meant that we had no funding, so I had to continue running the business of selling textiles from the collection (which is how the textile collection had always operated). Additionally, there were very few of the checks and balances that you would get in a larger organization and I definitely believe there is a huge benefit from having to arrive at a consensus. On a personal note, after launching Textile Hive I felt a sense of isolation, largely working on my own, after being part of a larger group throughout the project.

Where do you see digitization going in the coming years?

I think interacting with the physical objects with augmented information will have major implications for both commercial and cultural collections. Having to interact through a computer or phone is a barrier we need to break through to make truly integrated collections. 3D scanning and virtual representations of collections is another area that shows promise and I hope these technologies soon become available outside large corporations and institutions. Recently we hosted a 3D workshop at Textile Hive and it was fascinating to see how a small textile swatch could be scanned, represented, and manipulated in a virtual environment. The ability of cultural institutions to dynamically display their materials, historically contextualize them and present their materials for reinterpretation really excites me. The two images below are completely virtual, the original fabric was scanned with Vizoo 3D scanner and the virtualization was done by the company Swatchbook. All the patterned textiles on the first image are fabrics from our collection and the third/bottom image is the original textile as viewed in 2D in our database. The model/form in the virtual image can be adjusted in real time along with he drape of the garment and textile. If you saw this image while scrolling through your Instagram feed would you notice it wasn't real? I'm not sure I would. Object material virtualization poses some interesting challenges and opportunities for both institutions and companies.

Textile Hive doubled our memberships (educational + professional) in 2017 and we’d love to grow in 2018. Placing our physical collection is still a current undertaking/major interest/future plan of mine. If you have any suggestions I’d love to talk! Finally, having created a system for managing a singular collection I’m very interested exploring the creation of a system to connect smaller independent collections online. Considering all of the important cultural material that resides outside large institutions (like ours) and are inaccessible, networking and creating a way to access these materials collectively seems like a worthy challenge.

Caleb Sayan is the co-founder of Textile Hive and the founder of Visual Archiving Solutions which helps bring large scale digitization projects to life for private, institutional and corporate material collections.