Jeeeun Kim

3D printed tactile picture books for children with visual impairments: a design probe

Young children with visual impairments greatly benefit from tactile graphics (illustrations, images, puzzles, objects) during their learning processes. In this paper we present insight about using a 3D printed tactile picture book as a design probe. This has allowed us to identify and engage stakeholders in our research on improving the technical and human processes required for creating 3D printed tactile pictures, and cultivate a community of practice around these processes. We also contribute insight about how our inperson and digital methods of interacting with teachers, parents, and other professionals dedicated to supporting children with visual impairments contributes to research practices.

Toward 3D-Printed Movable Tactile Pictures for Children with Visual Impairments

Many childrens books contain movable pictures with elements that can be physically opened, closed, pushed, pulled, spun, flipped, or swung. But these tangible, interactive reading experiences are inaccessible to children with visual impairments. This paper presents a set of 3D-printable models designed as building blocks for creating movable tactile pictures that can be touched, moved, and understood by children with visual impairments. Examples of these models are canvases, connectors, hinges, spinners, sliders, lifts, walls, and cutouts. They can be used to compose movable tactile pictures to convey a range of spatial concepts, such as in/out, up/down, and high/low. The design and development of these models were informed by three formative studies including 1) a survey on popular moving mechanisms in childrens books and 3D-printed parts to implement them, 2) two workshops on the process creating movable tactile pictures by hand (e.g., Lego, Play-Doh), and 3) creation of wood-based prototypes and an informal testing on sighted preschoolers. Also, we propose a design language based on XML and CSS for specifying the content and structure of a movable tactile picture. Given a specification, our system can generate a 3D-printable model. We evaluate our approach by 1) transcribing six childrens books, and 2) conducting six interviews on domain experts including four teachers for the visually impaired, one blind adult, two publishers at the National Braille Press, a renowned tactile artist, and a librarian.

Facade: Auto-generating Tactile Interfaces to Appliances

Digital keypads have proliferated on common appliances, from microwaves and refrigerators to printers and remote controls. For blind people, such interfaces are inaccessible. We conducted a formative study with 6 blind people which demonstrated a need for custom designs for tactile labels without dependence on sighted assistance. To address this need, we introduce Facade - a crowdsourced fabrication pipeline to make physical interfaces accessible by adding a 3D printed augmentation of tactile buttons overlaying the original panel. Blind users capture a photo of an inaccessible interface with a standard marker for absolute measurements using perspective transformation. Then this image is sent to multiple crowd workers, who work in parallel to quickly label and describe elements of the interface. These labels are then used to generate 3D models for a layer of tactile and pressable buttons that fits over the original controls. Users can customize the shape and labels of the buttons using a web interface. Finally, a consumer-grade 3D printer fabricates the layer, which is then attached to the interface using adhesives. Such fabricated overlay is an inexpensive (

Reprise: A Design Tool for Specifying, Generating, and Customizing 3D Printable Adaptations on Everyday Objects

10) and more general solution to making physical interfaces accessible.

3D Folded PrintGami: Transforming Passive 3D Printed Objects to Interactive by Inserted Paper Origami Circuits

Everyday tools and objects often need to be customized for an unplanned use or adapted for specific user, such as adding a bigger pull to a zipper or a larger grip for a pen. The advent of low-cost 3D printing offers the possibility to rapidly construct a wide range of such adaptations. However, while 3D printers are now affordable enough for even home use, the tools needed to design custom adaptations normally require skills that are beyond users with limited 3D modeling experience. In this paper, we describe Reprise--a design tool for specifying, generating, customizing and fitting adaptations onto existing household objects. Reprise allows users to express at a high level what type of action is applied to an object. Based on this high level specification, Reprise automatically generates adaptations. Users can use simple sliders to customize the adaptations to better suit their particular needs and preferences, such as increasing the tightness for gripping, enhancing torque for rotation, or making a larger base for stability. Finally, Reprise provides a toolkit of fastening methods and support structures for fitting the adaptations onto existing objects. To validate our approach, we used Reprise to replicate 15 existing adaptation examples, each of which represents a specific category in a design space distilled from an analysis of over 3000 cases found in the literature and online communities. We believe this work would benefit makers and designers for prototyping lifehacking solutions and assistive technologies.

FoldMecha: Exploratory Design and Engineering of Mechanical Papercraft

Recent advances in 3D printing allowed end users to easily utilize desktop 3D printers. However, these printers mainly consume molten plastic, due to limited materiality. While high interests on creating interactive 3D objects with electronics are ubiquitous, commercial 3D printers have its own boundaries of not integrating electronics. On the other hand, paper as flexible medium has shown its possibility to be a channel to host interactive objects, enabling interaction triggered by user. In this paper, we introduce a process of integrating paper circuit into a 3D printed object, combining two universal fabrication techniques, 3D printing and paper crafting: 1) design a hollow 3D model, 2) construct circuits on the 2D planar cutout of this figure, 3) pause 3D printing to insert folded circuits in, 4) resume to continue printing. We empower makers and tinkerers to employ pervasive technology to build interactive 3D objects without hacking machine, obtaining professional utilities, or buying expensive materials.

A Study to Empower Children to Design Movable Tactile Pictures for Children with Visual Impairments

We present FoldMecha, a computer-aided design (CAD) system for exploratory construction of mechanical papercraft. FoldMecha enables students to (a) design their own movements with simple mechanisms by modifying parameters and (b) build physical prototypes. This paper describes the system, as well as associated prototyping methods that make the construction process easier and more adaptable to widely different creations. The paper also discusses a week-long workshop that we held with six teenagers using FoldMecha. The teens successfully designed and built their own mechanisms, and adapted them to a variety of creations. Throughout the workshop, they progressively achieved an advanced level of skill and understanding about mechanical movements.

Using LEGO to model 3D tactile picture books by sighted children for blind children

3D Printing has shown a great potential to print tactile picture books, in order to cultivate emergent literacy for children with visual impairments. However, currently available 3D design tools are hard to learn, resulting in children to be excluded from the participatory design of tactile pictures. Also, existing 3D design software lacks of functionality to incorporate mobility and rich textures, which is critical aspect of the effective tactile picture. In this paper, we review our formative studies, presenting a hands-on design process for children to empower their own creativities into 3D tactile pictures design, and to engage them to bring other materials to enhance touch experiences.

Machines as Co-Designers: A Fiction on the Future of Human-Fabrication Machine Interaction

3D printing has shown great potential in creating tactile picture books for blind children to develop emergent literacy. Sighted children can be motivated to contribute to the modeling of more tactile picture books. But current 3D design tools are too difficult to use. Can sighted children model a tactile book by LEGO pieces instead? Can a LEGO be converted to a digital model that can be then printed?

Seen music: ambient music data visualization for children with hearing impairments

While current fabrication technologies have led to a wealth of techniques to create physical artifacts of virtual designs, they require unidirectional and constraining interaction workflows. Instead of acting as intelligent agents that support humans natural tendencies to iteratively refine ideas and experiment, todays fabrication machines function as output devices. In this work, we argue that fabrication machines and tools should be thought of as live collaborators to aid in-situ creativity, adapting physical dynamics come from unique materiality and/or machine specific parameters. Through a series of design narratives, we explore Human-FabMachine Interaction (HFI), a novel viewpoint from which to reflect on the importance of (i) interleaved design thinking and refinement during fabrication, (ii) enriched methods of interaction with fabrication machines regardless of skill level, and (iii) concurrent human and machine interaction.