As a rule, user interface designers work iteratively. Over the course of a project, they repeatedly gather feedback, typically through in-person meetings, and update their designs accordingly. Through formative work, we find that design software tools do not support designers in managing meeting notes and previous design iterations as a cohesive whole. This causes designers to rely on ad-hoc practices for organizing work, which makes it hard for them to keep track of relevant feedback and explain their design decisions. To address this problem, we present Charrette, a system that allows designers to curate design iterations, attach meeting notes to the relevant content, and navigate sequences of design iterations with the associated notes to facilitate in-person discussions. In an exploratory user study, we evaluate how Charrette affects designers' self-reported ease in handling feedback during face-to-face discussions, compared with using their own tools. We find that using Charrette correlates with increased confidence and recall in discussing previous design decisions.

Recent digital fabrication tools have enabled new form-giving using a wide range of physical materials. However, light as a first class creative material has been largely ignored within the design of our electronic objects. Our work expands the illumination design space by treating light as a physical material. We introduce a digital design tool that simulates and visualizes physical light interactions with a variety of materials for creating custom luminaires. We further develop a computational design and fabrication process for creating custom secondary optics elements (SOEs), which provides additional handles for users to physically shape and redirect light to compose, fill, and evenly diffuse planar and volumetric geometries. Through a workshop study with novice electronic designers, we show how incorporating physical techniques to shape light alters how users view the role and function of LEDs and electronics. We produce example pieces that showcase how our approach expands the electronics aesthetic and discuss how viewing light as material can engender novel, expressive artifacts.

As interactive electronics become increasingly intimate and personal, the design of circuitry is correspondingly developing a more playful and creative aesthetic. Circuit sketching and design is a multidimensional activity which combines the arts, crafts, and engineering broadening participation of electronic creation to include makers of diverse backgrounds. In order to support this design ecology, we present Ellustrate, a digital design tool that enables the functional and aesthetic design of electronic circuits with multiple conductive and dielectric materials. Ellustrate guides users through the fabrication and debugging process, easing the task of practical circuit creation while supporting designers' aesthetic decisions throughout the circuit authoring workflow. In a formal user study, we demonstrate how Ellustrate enables a new electronic design conversation that combines electronics, materials, and visual aesthetic concerns.