CHI'21, MorpheesPlug
MorpheesPlug: A Toolkit for Prototyping Shape-Changing Interfaces
Hyunyoung Kim, Aluna Everitt, Carlos E. Tejada, Mengyu Zhong, Daniel Ashbrook
Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI'21. [link]
SplitSlider is a reconfigurable control interface that allows input for uncertainty. When users are not certain about their answer to a survey question, they can use the three slider cursors for input as in the picture above. The three cursors can input probability distribution. When they are certain, they can combine the three cursors into one to input a single value as an answer.
Toolkits for shape-changing interfaces (SCIs) enable designers and researchers to easily explore the broad design space of SCIs. However, despite their utility, existing approaches are often limited in the number of shape-change features they can express. This paper introduces MorpheesPlug , a toolkit for creating SCIs that covers seven of the eleven shape-change features identified in the literature. MorpheesPlug is comprised of (1) a set of six standardized widgets that express the shape-change features with user-definable parameters; (2) software for 3D-modeling the widgets to create 3D-printable pneumatic SCIs; and (3) a hardware platform to control the widgets. To evaluate MorpheesPlug we carried out ten open-ended interviews with novice and expert designers who were asked to design a SCI using our software. Participants highlighted the ease of use and expressivity of the MorpheesPlug.
MorpheesPlug is an open-source project. The software for the parametric design of the widgets, which is a script for Autodesk Fusion 360, can be found on GitHub. The hardware PCB schematics and the case design are also on the GitHub page.
30s teaser
5min talk at CHI '21