What’s In Your Pocket Says More Than You Think

What happens when you think of a pocket not as 
storage, but as a space?

Boey has built a practice around tactile, inclusive kitchen tools. Objects that are as intuitive for blind users as they are beautiful to everyone. He’s become an expert at designing with the body, not just the eyes. So when we invited him to reflect on the concept of pocketwear, something clicked.

He admits, he hadn’t considered the pocket as a design space. But the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. The pocket, he explains, is where design meets mystery. Where everything is used without being seen. It’s a place where, according to Boey, function, integrity, inclusivity, sensory elements, and even social, emotional, and identity aspects come together. It's a design that lives close to the body. And maybe even closer to who we are.

What can your hands tell you that your eyes can’t?

Sight may dominate most product design today. But Boey invites us to shift focus. What if we let the hands lead? What if tactility, not visual polish, became our design baseline? An equally intelligent and often more honest way of navigating the world.

“Your hand is so honest,” he explained.

“If it’s nice, you know. If it’s not, you also recognise it immediately. It’s very direct... although you don’t see it”​.

Boey’s insights comes from years of working and designing with people with limited or no vision. He describes how a simple object like a key, something most of us take for granted- can become a barrier. “They’re just flat metal pieces,” he said. “For someone who’s blind, the resolution of the fingers is everything. A rounded edge, a notch, a texture, these small cues make all the difference”.

So what if, instead of solving everything visually, we started solving things sensorially? What if we trusted touch to guide design?

This is where Boey sees real design potential. “The tactile functions we often solve visually,” he said. “But they can and should be solved by the hands.”