This work presents Magnetform, a shape-change display toolkit designed to enable exploration of movement in soft materials. The toolkit allows designers with no technical knowledge to leverage their material expertise to experiment witCHI 2022
This paper explores how robotic bar-stools that initiate conversation by asking “What’s your name?” can influence and enhance the dynamics of initial human-to-human social encounters.
h shape-change. We present the toolkit design, and case studies with two design studios who used the toolkit for 15-days each. Through the presentation of their process, we reflect on two main themes: empowering designers to participate in shape-change exploration; and the developing practice of designing objects which integrate motion. We situate this work as part of the growing efforts in the TEI community to involve designers in the evolution of shape-changing interfaces, and demonstrate how material-oriented designers could contribute to this field in which materiality plays a major role in.

What is it?


Opening-encounters are an integral element of social interaction
and are essential for social relationships. Specifically, opening encounters between strangers form a complex social context and often involve awkwardness and tension. We explored whether augmenting everyday objects with autonomous capabilities can facilitate an opening-encounter between strangers. A pair of robotic bar-stools were designed to rotate participants sitting on them. We evaluated the opening-encounter experience in three conditions: bar-stools rotating participants towards one another; bar-stools rotating participants away from one another; and bar stools with no rotation. Our initial findings indicate that rotating participants towards each other led to positive encounters, encouraged social interaction, and increased interpersonal communication. The other two conditions were less likely to initiate social interactions. This preliminary study highlights the potential of facilitating positive opening-encounters using autonomous furniture that are perceived as a natural part of the interaction, without altering its human nature.