Digital art-making can be transformative for people living with disabilities. However, accessibility challenges force artists to use lengthy workarounds and interrupt their creative processes. We employed a Research-through-Design approach with six digital artists with upper limb motor impairments. First, we co-designed a stylus sleeve artifact capable of detecting pen-based gestures. In a second phase, we deployed this artifact as a design probe to gain insights into how artists adapt their workflows. We found that artists rely on resilient processes that took long time to form, and they manage to keep a balance between their creative immersion and physical discomfort. The probe revealed that artists prioritized authorship and control, rejecting automated "fixes" that, in one participant’s words, "don’t feel like mine." We use this finding, along with the concepts of "crip time" and "flow," to interpret our results. We discuss how layered customization can support agency and embodiment, and conclude with design recommendations.

Virtual reality (VR) promises immersive gaming experiences, yet remains inaccessible for many gamers with upper limb motor impairments (ULMI) by relying on hand- and arm-based interactions. We investigate these accessibility challenges by first surveying gamers with ULMI on their experiences in VR gaming, then used the survey results to support a series of co-design workshops that connected gamers with professional VR designers to collaboratively address the limitations of current VR game controls. Our findings not only present actionable design considerations for more accessible VR interactions, but also motivate further accessibility research that facilitates direct collaboration between end users and designers to fully realize the immersive, inclusive potential of VR.

Digital artists with motor impairments in their upper limbs face considerable barriers to accessibility when using drawing tools. Our work aims to investigate the complex relationship between digital artists’ creative processes and their accessibility challenges. We conducted 15 interviews with artists who use input devices to make digital art, analyzing their accessibility challenges for producing digital artwork. We reviewed how effective the solutions are in diminishing the impact on their creative processes and identifying design opportunities for the research community. Using thematic analysis, we look at the challenges participants reported in their artistic production, including managing pain, discomfort, and injuries alongside workarounds. Secondly, the artists reported the complexities of managing internal and external perceptions. Lastly, the ways creative processes are impacted by the accessibility challenges and solutions related to their upper limb motor impairments. We discuss research directions which can better address the impact of accessibility challenges on creative processes, the balance of creative agency over tools, and design insights for more accessible artistic technologies.

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.

We present the Loom Pedals, an open-source hardware/software interface for enhancing a weaver’s ability to create on-the-fly, improvised designs in Jacquard weaving. Learning from traditional handweaving and our own weaving experiences, we describe our process of designing, implementing, and using the prototype Loom Pedals system with a TC2 Digital Jacquard loom. The Loom Pedals include a set of modular, reconfigurable foot pedals which can be mapped to parametric Operations that generate and transform digital woven designs. Our novel interface integrates design and loom control, providing a customizable workflow for playful, improvisational Jacquard weaving. We conducted a formative evaluation of the prototype through autobiographical methods and collaboratively developed future Loom Pedals features. We contribute our prototype, design process, and conceptual reflections on weaving as a human-machine dialog between a weaver, the loom, and many other agents.

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.

Smart textiles development is combining computing and textile technologies to create tactile, functional objects such as smart garments, soft medical devices, and space suits. However, the field also combines the massive waste streams of both the digital electronics and textiles industries. The following work explores how HCI researchers might be poised to address sustainability and waste in future smart textiles development through interventions at design time. Specifically, we perform a design inquiry into techniques and practices for reclaiming and reusing smart textiles materials and explore how such techniques can be integrated into smart textiles design tools. Beginning with a practice in sustainable or "slow" fashion, unravelling a garment into yarn, the suite of explorations titled "Unfabricate" probes values of time and labor in crafting a garment; speculates how a smart textile garment may be designed with reuse in mind; and imagines how electronic and textile components may be given new life in novel uses.

Woven smart textiles are useful in creating flexible electronics because they integrate circuitry into the structure of the fabric itself. However, there do not yet exist tools that support the specific needs of smart textiles weavers. This paper describes the process and development of AdaCAD, an application for composing smart textile weave drafts. By augmenting traditional weaving drafts, AdaCAD allows weavers to design woven structures and circuitry in tandem and offers specific support for common smart textiles techniques. We describe these techniques, how our tool supports them alongside feedback from smart textiles weavers. We conclude with a reflection on smart textiles practice more broadly and suggest that the metaphor of coproduction can be fruitful in creating effective tools and envisioning future applications in this space.