A rising number of HCI scholars have begun to use materiality as a starting point for exploring the design’s potential and restrictions. Despite the theoretical flourishing, the practical design process and instruction for beginner practitioners are still in scarcity. We leveraged the pictorial format to illustrate our crafting process of Puffy, a bio-inspired artifact that features a cilia-mimetic surface expressing anthropomorphic qualities through shape changes. Our approach consists of three key activities (i.e., analysis, synthesis, and detailing) interlaced recursively throughout the journey. Using this approach, we analyzed different input sources, synthesized peers’ critiques and self-reflection, and detailed the designed experience with iterative prototypes. Building on a reflective analysis of our approach, we concluded with a set of practical implications and design recommendations to inform other practitioners to initiate their investigations in interactive materiality.
Exploration
Demo
Overview
Throughout the process, we took experience perspective and ensured continuous first-hand experiences and reflections. By allowing our design direction to be guided by experiences and using a minimal set of design boundaries, novel design directions could be explored. During the first step (Analyzing), we explore different (nature-inspired) transition moments which we used as the behavior to analyze. Using our selected transitions, we explore non-aesthetic qualities to define transition characteristics. During this step, we aim to understand the behavior on all six aspects of interactive materiality as described by Stienstra et al. Being inspired by this transition, we explore different (composite) materials that fit our transition, building upon the material’s qualities from the start of the process. In the second step (Synthesis), we use our profound understanding to first couple and later map the material’s behavior to invite for a continuous action-perception loop. Over the course of several iterations, we aim to match the intended behavior as concluded from the analyzed transition. During the third step (Detailing), we aim to fine-tune the behavior to match human sensitivity to the extent that the interaction could become, in Heideggerian’s terminology, present-at-hand. To achieve this level, we use peer student critique and affinity diagraming to polish the subtleties of the interaction.