At the CHI 2016 conference this week, there were a slew of presentations on the topic of fabrication. First of course I have to highlight our own Megan Hofmann who presented our paper, Helping Hands, a study of participatory design of assistive technology that highlights the role of rapid prototyping techniques and 3D printing. In addition, Andrew Spielberg (MIT & Disney Intern) presented RapID (
), a joint project with Disney Research Pittsburgh which explores the use of RFID tags as a platform for rapidly prototyping interactive physical devices by leveraging probabilistic modeling to support rapid recognition of tag coverage and motion.
I was really excited by the breadth and depth of the interest at CHI in fabrication, which went far beyond these two papers. Although I only attended by robot (perhaps a topic for another blog post), attending got me to comb through the proceedings looking for things to go to — and there were far more than I could possibly find time for! Several papers looked qualitatively at the experiences and abilities of novices, from Hudson’s paper on newcomers to 3D printing to Booth’s paper on problems end users face constructing working circuits (video; couldn’t find a pdf) to Bennett’s study of e-NABLE hand users and identity.
There were a number of innovative technology papers, including Ramaker’s Rube Goldbergesque RetroFab, Groeger’s HotFlex (which supports post-processing at relatively low temperatures), and Peng’s incremental printing while modifying. These papers fill two full sessions (I have only listed about half). Other interesting and relevant presentations (not from this group) included a slew of fabrication papers, a study of end user programming of physical interfaces, and studies of assistive technology use including the e-NABLE community.
Two final papers I have to call out because they are so beautiful: Kazi’s Chronofab (look at the video) and a study in patience, Efrat’s Hybrid Bricolage for designing hand-smocked artifacts (video, again can’t find the paper online).