Raf Ramakers

PaperPulse: An Integrated Approach for Embedding Electronics in Paper Designs

We present PaperPulse, a design and fabrication approach that enables designers without a technical background to produce standalone interactive paper artifacts by augmenting them with electronics. With PaperPulse, designers overlay pre-designed visual elements with widgets available in our design tool. PaperPulse provides designers with three families of widgets designed for smooth integration with paper, for an overall of 20 different interactive components. We also contribute a logic demonstration and recording approach, Pulsation, that allows for specifying functional relationships between widgets. Using the final design and the recorded Pulsation logic, PaperPulse generates layered electronic circuit designs, and code that can be deployed on a microcontroller. By following automatically generated assembly instructions, designers can seamlessly integrate the microcontroller and widgets in the final paper artifact.

Paddle: highly deformable mobile devices with physical controls

We present the concept of highly deformable mobile devices that can be transformed into various special-purpose controls in order to bring physical controls to mobile devices. Physical controls have the advantage of exploiting peoples innate abilities for manipulating physical objects in the real world. We designed and implemented a prototype, called Paddle, to demonstrate our concept. Additionally, we explore the interaction techniques enabled by this concept and conduct an in-depth study to evaluate our transformable physical controls. Our findings show that these physical controls provide several benefits over traditional touch interaction techniques commonly used on mobile devices.

RetroFab: A Design Tool for Retrofitting Physical Interfaces using Actuators, Sensors and 3D Printing

We present RetroFab, an end-to-end design and fabrication environment that allows non-experts to retrofit physical interfaces. Our approach allows for changing the layout and behavior of physical interfaces. Unlike customizing software interfaces, physical interfaces are often challenging to adapt because of their rigidity. With RetroFab, a new physical interface is designed that serves as a proxy interface for the legacy controls that are now operated by actuators. RetroFab makes this concept of retrofitting devices available to non-experts by automatically generating an enclosure structure from an annotated 3D scan. This enclosure structure holds together actuators, sensors as well as components for the redesigned interface. To allow retrofitting a wide variety of legacy devices, the RetroFab design tool comes with a toolkit of 12 components. We demonstrate the versatility and novel opportunities of our approach by retrofitting five domestic objects and exploring their use cases. Preliminary user feedback reports on the experience of retrofitting devices with RetroFab.

Kickables: tangibles for feet

We introduce the concept of tangibles that users can manipulate with their feet. We call them kickables. Unlike traditional tangibles, kickables allow for very large interaction surfaces as kickables reside on the ground. The main benefit of kickables over other foot-based modalities, such as foot touch, is their strong affordance, which we validate in two user studies. This affordance makes kickables well-suited for walk-up installations, such as tradeshows or museum exhibits. We present a custom design as well as five families of standard kickables to help application designers create kickable applications faster. Each family supports multiple standard controls, such as push buttons, switches, dials, and sliders. Each type explores a different design principle, in particular different mechanical constraints. We demonstrate an implementation on our pressure-sensing floor.

PaperPulse: An Integrated Approach to Fabricating Interactive Paper

We present PaperPulse, a design and fabrication approach that enables designers to produce standalone interactive paper artifacts by augmenting them with electronics. With PaperPulse, users overlay visual designs with widgets provided in the design tool. PaperPulse provides three families of widgets, designed for smooth integration with paper, for a total of 20 different interactive components. We also contribute a demonstration and recording approach, Pulsation, that allows specifying interaction logic. Using the final design and the recorded Pulsation logic, PaperPulse generates layered electronic circuit designs, and code that can be deployed on a microcontroller. By following automatically generated assembly instructions, designers can seamlessly integrate the microcontroller and widgets in the final paper artifact.

Silicone Devices: A Scalable DIY Approach for Fabricating Self-Contained Multi-Layered Soft Circuits using Microfluidics

We present a scalable Do-It-Yourself (DIY) fabrication workflow for prototyping highly stretchable yet robust devices using a CO2 laser cutter, which we call Silicone Devices. Silicone Devices are self-contained and thus embed components for input, output, processing, and power. Our approach scales to arbitrary complex devices as it supports techniques to make multi-layered stretchable circuits and buried VIAs. Additionally, high-frequency signals are supported as our circuits consist of liquid metal and are therefore highly conductive and durable. To enable makers and interaction designers to prototype a wide variety of Silicone Devices, we also contribute a stretchable sensor toolkit, consisting of touch, proximity, sliding, pressure, and strain sensors. We demonstrate the versatility and novel opportunities of our technique by prototyping various samples and exploring their use cases. Strain tests report on the reliability of our circuits and preliminary user feedback reports on the user-experience of our workflow by non-engineers.

Reconfiguring and Fabricating Special-Purpose Tangible Controls

Unlike regular interfaces on touch screens or desktop computers, tangible user interfaces allow for more physically rich interactions that better uses the capacity of our motor system. On the flipside, the physicality of tangibles comes with rigidity. This makes it hard to (1) use tangibles on systems that require a variety of controls and interaction styles, and (2) make changes to physical interfaces once manufactured. In my research, I explore techniques that allow users to reconfigure and fabricate tangible interfaces in order to mitigate these issues.