Leaking bodies are often concealed or disregarded in both society and design. Likewise, bodily fluids are rarely leveraged as triggers for material interaction in HCI. In this pictorial, we investigate how fluid-responsive biomaterials can enable porous, expressive, and cyclical interactions co-shaped by the body. We focus on a milk-derived bioplastic with reversible shape-changing properties, examining fluid absorption as a meaningful design affordance. Our material-led approach contributes both formulation and fabrication methods of casein bioplastic; while autoethnographic inquiry with a lactating body informed the development of Leaky Body Maps and speculative garments that position leakage as a generative site of body-material interaction. This work contributes to the discourse of feminist and posthuman HCI by centering bodily permeability, material responsiveness, and the potential of designing with—rather than concealing—leaky bodies.

Bioactuated Tapestry is an installation that explores how biomaterials and textile craft unfold multiple temporalities of interaction. Structured in three zones, the installation moves from milk-based bioplastic samples that change shape quickly when misted, to a Sample Book that documents iterations of bioplastic integration into weaving, to a woven tapestry that changes shape slowly in response to humidity in the surrounding space. Together, these zones demonstrate how interaction can emerge from material behavior shaped through biomaterial formulation and, when woven, through structure. The work foregrounds biomaterial agency, weaving, and situated sustainability grounded in sourcing, fabrication, and practices of care. Through this convergence of biodesign and textile craft, Bioactuated Tapestry aligns with the TEI theme of Resurgence and Convergence, highlighting how material-led practices reconnect material experimentation, environmental attunement, and embodied ways of knowing.

This paper explores the dynamics of interdisciplinary collaboration between designers, scientists, and engineers through ten stories as told from the perspective of material-led designers.These stories focus on material-led designers working in contexts like biodesign and smart textiles, where novel materials, fabrication methods, and technology often intersect, requiring cross-disciplinary collaboration.By including perspectives from designers within and adjacent to HCI, the study broadens the understanding of interdisciplinary teamwork that combines scientific, technical, and craft-based expertise.Our analysis highlights how designers navigate challenges like differing terminologies, epistemic hierarchies, and conflicting priorities.We discuss strategies such as material prototypes, attitudes of inquiry and openness, switching lexicons, and the value of interdisciplinary contexts.This research underscores designers as "translators" who mediate epistemological tensions, use tangible artifacts to communicate, and articulate possible applications.This research contributes ten stories as narrative resources for understanding strategies and fostering interdisciplinary spaces within HCI.

Wearable and beauty technologies face environmental sustainability challenges due to their material composition, electronic waste, and end-of-life disposal. In response, we introduce "Bio-e-Nails," a sustainable design approach for customizable, interactive artificial nails made from biobased materials. Our work considers the accessibility of creating these nails and explores the affordances of biobased materials, such as their potential for customization and design flexibility throughout their lifecycle. This pictorial covers: (1) two bioplastic formulations for Bio-e-Nails to adjust strength, color, interactivity, and biodegradability; (2) the low-tech fabrication process of Bio-e-Nails, including customization of shape, size, and interactive features like embedded NFC or external aesthetic decorations; and (3) three end-of-life strategies for Bio-e-Nails— mechanical, chemical, and biological—that offer insights for broader design contexts. We also discuss how our sustainable design approach focused on materiality can apply to temporary beauty and wearable technologies more broadly.

Trends in designing with living organisms have focused mainly on leveraging the organisms qualities for interactivity and designing for care through a more-than-human design lens. As DIS gains interest in interactions with living organisms and more-than-human design goals, we reflect upon these trends and call for practices that surface nonhuman perspectives and critically draw out our own. We propose tracing as a material practice that surfaces insights on care and relation in the rich space between the human-designer and organism. Through reflective writings, we present a first-person account of tracing slime mold through visualizations, embodied experiences, and sonifying electrical resistance. These tracings capture both the slime mold’s ways and our own, inviting us to observe our actions to facilitate its life. By tracing experiences of growing and making with slime mold, we re-orient toward nonhuman perspectives and discuss how such practices might advance capacities of design research.

Women’s intimate health is a historically stigmatized topic in many cultures. Arab and Muslim values such as privacy and modesty can influence the extent to which members of these communities seek information or help regarding their intimate health. However, Eurocentric approaches to design and research for these groups only yield resistance due to their challenging of core values. We explore prior work in women’s health in HCI and cultural models to design for an underrepresented group in HCI research. Through interviews conducted with 16 participants who identified as Arab Muslims, we investigated attitudes, cultural and religious values, and backgrounds relating to awareness of women’s intimate health issues. Our thematic analysis identified shared experiences in learning about women’s intimate health and ways in which Arab culture and Islam synchronize or diverge. We contribute cultural and religious elements to consider in research methodology and design for Arab and Muslim communities.

Smart textiles combine electronics with traditional textile forms, showing great promise in creating soft and flexible interactive systems for human-computer interaction and robotics. However, they also present significant sustainability challenges as they merge two substantial waste streams: textiles and electronics. This paper contributes to sustainability efforts by focusing on the integration of biobased materials that are biodegradable, compostable, and recyclable in the design of smart textiles. We introduce a Desktop Biofibers Spinning Machine to enable smart textile innovators to explore biobased fibers (i.e., biofibers) and envision applications in sustainable smart textiles. We describe the machine’s design, a usage walkthrough, considerations for fiber spinning, and an exploration of various formulations to make gelatin biofibers. We provide several examples of biofibers integrated into smart textile applications. Finally, we discuss lessons learned from working with biofibers and the unique opportunities our machine brings to the fiber design space in HCI.

We explore how actively engaging with the temporalities of a nonhuman organism can lead to multispecies understanding. To do so, we design a bio-digital calendar that brings attention to the growth and health of kombucha SCOBY, a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast that lives in a tea medium. The non-invasive bio-digital calendar surrounds the kombucha SCOBY to track (via sensors) and enhance (via sound) its growth. As we looked at and listened to our kombucha SCOBY calendar on a daily basis, we became attuned to the slowness of kombucha SCOBY. This multisensory noticing practice with the calendar, in turn, destabilized our preconceived human-centered positionality, leading to a more humble, decentered relationship between us and the organism. Through our experiences with the bio-digital calendar, we gained a better relational multispecies understanding of temporalities based on care, which, in the long term, might be a solution to a more sustainable future.

In this studio, we will explore sustainable tangible interfaces by making a range of biomaterials that are bio-based and readily biodegradable. Building off of previous TEI studios that were centered around one specific biomaterial (i.e., bioplastics at TEI’22 and microbial cellulose at TEI’23), this studio will provide participants the ability to experience a wide variety of biomaterials from algae-based bioplastics, to food-waste-based bioclays, to gelatin-based biofoams. We will teach participants how to identify types of biomaterials that are applicable to their own research and how to make them. Through hands-on activities, we will demonstrate how to implement biomaterials in the design of sustainable tangible interfaces and discuss topics sensitized by biological media such as more-than-human temporalities, bioethics, care, and unmaking. Ultimately, our goal is to facilitate a space in which HCI researchers and designers can collaborate, create, and discuss the opportunities and challenges of working with sustainable biomaterials.

In this work, we introduce biodegradation as a process of more-than-human unmaking. We begin by positioning biodegradation amongst related works in design research before presenting a circular process of making and unmaking biomaterials and living organisms through biodegradation. To exemplify this process, we detail two existing works—ReClaym and Biomenstrual—that exemplify how biodegradability can be explored in design through different biomaterials, methods, and contexts. By diffractively reading these projects through one another, we identify six themes and corresponding suggestions for researchers engaging with biodegradation. Lastly, we discuss the broader design implications and limitations, as well as the more-than-human values that emerge from designing for biodegradation via biomaterials. Through this, we aim to provide design researchers with practical tools and insights for engaging with biodegradation to unmake anthropocentric hierarchies between humans, non-humans, and biomaterials, which in turn can promote environmental sustainability and support more-than-human collaboration and care.

Our bodies are home to an unseen ecosystem of microbes that live in symbiosis with us. In this work, we extend the “human” in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to include these microbes. Specifically, we explore the skin microbiome as an intimate material for interaction design. Viewing the body as a microbial interface, we start by presenting a method to grow our microbiome such that it becomes visible to the human eye. We then present a design space that explores how different environmental parameters, such as temperature and growth media, can be controlled to influence the color of the microbiome. We further investigate how our interactions in a daily uncontrolled environment (e.g., exercising, hugging, typing) can impact the microbiome. We demonstrate several wearable applications that reveal and control the microbiome. Lastly, we address the challenges and opportunities of working with the microbiome as an intimate, living material for interaction design.

Designing with living organisms can offer new perspectives to design research and practices in HCI. In this work, we explore first-person perspectives through design research with Kombucha Scoby, a microbial biofilm. We began with a material design exploration, producing digitally fabricated and crafted samples with Scoby. As we noticed our felt experiences while growing and working with Kombucha Scoby, we shifted towards a reflective autoethnographic study. Through reflective writings, we followed sensory experiences such as hearing the Kombucha fermentation, touching the Scoby while harvesting it, and watching the slow growth of layers over time. Subsequently, we designed "sensory engagement probes”: designed experiments that bring forward new connections and communicate our process, motivations, and tensions that emerged while engaging with the organism. Lastly, we discuss how such design research can inform material design with living matter by creating space to contemplate "life as shared experience" and more-than-human design perspectives.

We present an interactive breastplate grown and fabricated from SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast) biofilm over the course of 13 weeks. Challenging the fail-fast and rapid prototyping trends that inhabit HCI research, we instead explore what it means to design at the pace of another living organism. To create our wearable, we combined DIY-Bio knowledge with digital fabrication methods and traditional crafting techniques in order to tune aspects of the SCOBY such as strength, flexibility, shape, color, and electrical conductivity. We then embedded sensors and LEDs within the SCOBY to create a wearable that visually signals based on touch interactions. We demonstrate the interactivity of the breastplate in an everyday context, where differing light responses result from the wearer being hugged, tapped, or brushed. Lastly, we analyze the biodegradability of the SCOBY breastplate and observe the limitations and opportunities of SCOBY as a grown microbial interface.

The goal of this studio is to facilitate a space in which HCI researchers and designers can explore SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast), a sustainable biofilm, grown in kombucha tea, that acts similarly to traditional leathers when harvested and dried. While SCOBY is a popular biomaterial in biodesign and DIYBio practices, we aim to introduce SCOBY as a biomaterial for HCI and ground it in sustainable HCI and slow design theory. Participants will then gain hands-on experience with SCOBY through a material exploration phase (e.i., learning how to embed colors, patterns, and electronics) followed by a structured SCOBY application creation phase. Ultimately, the goal of this studio is to give HCI practitioners who are interested in biodesign a space and time to collaborate, create and discuss the opportunities and challenges of kombucha SCOBY as a biomaterial for HCI.

Each new material developed opens a broader pallet of aesthetic and functional possibilities for designers. This paper introduces DIS to biofoam, a material that is water-soluble, biodegradable, and can be made conductive. We describe the material in detail: the process of making the material from scratch, the material’s fabrication into forms with hand-craft techniques, and present two HCI specific applications of the biofoam. The biofoam can be cooked, molded, layered, extruded, dissolved or recooked opening up possibilities to consider the entire life cycle of the material in the design process. We contribute design considerations to allow designers to “tune” the biofoam to the desired quality, as well as a characterization of many aspects of the biofoam such as compression, spring back time, water permeability, and electrical conductivity. Finally, we discuss the unique opportunities this material and its life cycle bring to the design and HCI communities.

In this work, we use composted food waste to create ReClaym: a personal biomaterial, made at home, that reflects the makers’ relationship with food. We combine our personal compost with non-toxic binders to create a biomaterial that can completely biodegrade. We propose Intimate Making as an approach for working with ReClaym that leverages familiar, hands-on techniques to enhance maker-material communication, which in turn leads to a deeper material understanding. We explore methods to customize ReClaym via color, texture, sensing, and conductivity. We apply manual fabrication techniques (sculpting, molding, and hand-held extruding) and design explorations to create a collection of applications that include garden paraphernalia, games, and personal items found in the home. We then examine the entire life cycle of ReClaym, which both begins and ends with composting—giving food waste a second life and providing a sustainable end of life for ReClaym artifacts, thus making the process truly circular.

In this studio we explore designing with Alganyl, a sustainable biomaterial, made of food-grade ingredients, that can be fully recycled (zero-waste) or biodegraded in soil. Specifically, Alganyl is a bioplastic formulated to mimic the flexibility and strength of vinyl fabric. This studio will bring together researchers with diverse expertise that will explore embedding color, texture and sensing in Alganyl as well as a variety of fabrication techniques. Participants will have the opportunity to gain hands-on experience through making wearables that can sense ultraviolet light or temperature, as well as explore their own creative applications. Participants will also learn about material-centered design methodologies and sustainability within the context of HCI. Lastly participants will be encouraged to share their experiences with designing with Alganyl as well as discuss the impact of biomaterials in sustainable HCI research.

We explore designing with Alganyl, a highly customizable and sustainable biomaterial made of food-grade ingredients. To make Alganyl, we optimized existing bioplastics for flexibility and strength, resulting in a biomaterial that acts and feels similar to vinyl fabric. Moreover, Alganyl is a zero-waste material that can be fully recycled or biodegraded in 60 days. We further explored designing with Alganyl by embedding color, texture, and sensing pigments. We showcase a wide range of applications made entirely of Alganyl including a sculpture, doll clothing, environment-sensing accessories, and a recycled concert bag. We conducted a user study with 12 participants that made Alganyl at home, fabricated their own applications, and then speculated on future applications for Alganyl. Overall, participants found Alganyl to be an accessible biomaterial that can be used for many applications. We hope designers and HCI researchers will embrace Alganyl as a sustainable biomaterial for making recyclable and biodegradable artifacts.

Living matter is an emerging topic of interest in HCI as researchers are recognizing the unique affordances of biological materials. We explore direct interactions with Dinoflagellates, bioluminescent algae that produce light when exposed to oxygen through physical stimulation. Leveraging Dinoflagellates’ natural feedback mechanism, we propose directly engaging the human user with the organism through physical kinetic interactions. We take an organism-centered design approach, considering the well-being of the organism by focusing first on designing appropriate environments for the organism, then proceeding to exploring the available interactions within these environments. Our framework consists of four components (form, reception, feedback, and control) and can be used to guide designers in their design process with living matter. We demonstrate the framework with environments for Dinoflagellates and three real-life examples: a checkers game, a ball game. and hopscotch. Last, we discuss the constraints and limitations of integrating Dinoflagellates and living matter in interactive systems.

We present Electriflow: a new class of soft electrohydraulic actuators as building blocks for prototyping shape-changing interfaces. These actuators are silent and fast in operation and can be fabricated with commodity materials. Electriflow generates an immediate hydraulic force upon electrostatic activation without an external fluid supply source, enabling a simple and compact self-contained design. This paper describes the materials and mechanisms of these shape-changing building blocks, as well as the underlying fabrication process, which includes a software tool that assists in their design, shape visualization and construction. Finally, we explore four classes of application prototypes: tangible animation, actuating origami creases, shape-changing phone, and shape-changing bowl.

This work introduces “destaining” as an interactive component for the HCI community. While staining happens unintentionally (e.g., spilling coffee), destaining can be used as an intentional design tool that selectively degrades stains on textiles. We explore the design space using silver doped titanium dioxide (TiO2/Ag), stains and light as a set of design primitives for interactive systems. We then developed replicable and accessible fabrication and testing methods that enable HCI researchers and designers to upgrade various fabrics to self-destaining textiles. Next, we demonstrate a Self-deStaining textile interface with embedded Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) and moisture sensors that activate cleaning. Lastly, we showcase how the textile can be used in everyday objects such as self-cleaning clothes, a patterning station for phone cases, and accessories that change patterns and colors based on the user’s experiences.

Recently, researchers started to engineer not only the outer shape of objects, but also their internal microstructure. Such objects, typically based on 3D cell grids, are also known as metamaterials. Metamaterials have been used, for example, to create materials with soft and hard regions.

Digital microfluidic biochips (DMBs) are microfluidic devices that manipulate droplets on an array of electrodes. Microfluidic operations, such as transport, mixing, and split, are performed on the electrode array to perform a biochemical application. All previous work assumes that the DMB architecture is given and most approaches consider a rectangular shape for the electrode array. However, nonrectangular application-specific architectures are common in practice. Hence, in this paper, we propose an approach to the synthesis of application-specific architectures, such that the cost of the architecture is minimized and the timing constraints of the biochemical application are satisfied. DMBs can be affected by permanent faults, which may lead to the failure of the biochemical application. Our approach introduces redundant electrodes to synthesize fault-tolerant architectures aiming at increasing the yield of DMBs. We have used a tabu search metaheuristic for this architecture synthesis problem. We have proposed a technique to evaluate the architecture alternatives visited during the search, in terms of their impact on the timing constraints of the application. The proposed architecture synthesis approach has been evaluated using several benchmarks.

Microfluidic-based biochips are replacing the conventional biochemical analyzers, and are able to integrate onchip all the necessary functions for biochemical analysis using microfluidics. The digital microfluidic biochips are based on the manipulation of liquids not as a continuous flow, but as discrete droplets on an array of electrodes. Microfluidic operations, such as transport, mixing, split, are performed on this array by routing the corresponding droplets on a series of electrodes. Researchers have proposed several approaches for the synthesis of digital microfluidic biochips. All previous work assumes that the biochip architecture is given, and most approaches consider a rectangular shape for the electrode array. However, non-regular application-specific architectures are common in practice. Hence, in this paper, we propose an approach to the application-specific architecture synthesis. Our approach can also help the designer to increase the yield by introducing redundant electrodes to tolerate permanent faults. The proposed architecture synthesis algorithm has been evaluated using several benchmarks.