It's Not the Shape, It's the Settings: Tools for Exploring, Documenting, and Sharing Physical Fabrication Parameters in 3D PrintingThe material properties of 3D prints depend on their constituent materials, how they were printed, and local geometrical features. Motivated by challenges in sharing physical details of 3D printing workflows including machine state and print settings, we contribute tools to support the exploration of the vast design space these interdependent parameters make up. Inspired by live music performance and video captioning, we contribute an interactive controller for parameters not represented in geometry such as speed and extrusion rate, and a system for automatically syncing video documentation to machine settings, G-Code, and print commands. By synchronizing video with machine instructions and interactive adjustments, we archive the relationship between digital settings and physical output for revisiting and sharing. We demonstrate example workflows in multiple materials. Our approach suggests how maker tools that promote settings exploration and sharing can support the integration of fabrication technologies in new contexts, with new materials.2025BSBlair Subbaraman et al.University of WashingtonDesktop 3D Printing & Personal FabricationLaser Cutting & Digital FabricationCircuit Making & Hardware PrototypingCHI
"What Would I Want to Make? Probably Everything": Practices and Speculations of Blind and Low Vision Tactile Graphics CreatorsTactile graphics communicate images and spatial information to blind and low vision (BLV) audiences via touch. However, designing and producing tactile graphics is laborious and often inaccessible to BLV people themselves. We interviewed 14 BLV adults with experience both using and creating tactile graphics to understand their current and desired practices. We found that tactile graphics are intensely valued by many, but that access to and fluency with tactile graphics are compounding challenges. To produce tactile graphics, BLV makers constantly navigate tradeoffs between accessible, low-fidelity craft materials and less accessible, high-fidelity equipment. Going forward, we argue that tactile graphics design and production should be made widely accessible and that tactile graphics themselves should be designed to be expressive and ubiquitous. Drawing from these design goals, we propose specific future tools with features for inclusive designing, sharing, and (re)production of tactile graphics.2025GCGina Clepper et al.University of Washington, Human Centered Design and EngineeringVisual Impairment Technologies (Screen Readers, Tactile Graphics, Braille)Universal & Inclusive DesignCHI
What's in a cable? Abstracting Knitting Design Elements with Blended Raster/Vector PrimitivesIn chart-based programming environments for machine knitting, patterns are specified at a low level by placing operations on a grid. This highly manual workflow makes it challenging to iterate on design elements such as cables, colorwork, and texture. While vector-based abstractions for knitting design elements may facilitate higher-level manipulation, they often include interdependencies which require stitch-level reconciliation. To address this, we contribute a new way of specifying knits with blended vector and raster primitives. Our abstraction supports the design of interdependent elements like colorwork and texture. We have implemented our blended raster/vector specification in a direct manipulation design tool where primitives are layered and rasterized, allowing for simulation of the resulting knit structure and generation of machine instructions. Through examples, we show how our approach enables higher-level manipulation of various knitting techniques, including intarsia colorwork, short rows, and cables. Specifically, we show how our tool supports the design of complex patterns including origami pleat patterns and capacitive sensor patches.2024HTHannah Twigg-Smith et al.Shape-Changing Interfaces & Soft Robotic MaterialsDesktop 3D Printing & Personal FabricationShape-Changing Materials & 4D PrintingUIST
Technical Mentality: Principles for HCI Research and PracticeThis paper presents a reflection on the role of ontological inquiry in HCI research and practice. Specifically, we introduce philosopher Gilbert Simondon's proposal of technical mentality, an onto-epistemology based on direct knowledge of technical objects and systems. This paper makes the following contributions: an analysis of Simondon's ontological critique and its connection to technical mentality; a reflection on the ethical and practical implications of Simondon's proposal for systems research; an example of technical mentality in practice; and a discussion of how technical mentality might be extended into a design program for HCI through four principles: extension, integration, legibility, and expression.2024GBGabrielle Benabdallah et al.University of WashingtonTechnology Ethics & Critical HCIParticipatory DesignCHI
KnitScape: Computational Design and Yarn-Level Simulation of Slip and Tuck Colorwork Knitting PatternsSlipped and tucked stitches introduce small areas of deformation that compound and result in emergent textures on knitted fabrics. When used together with color changes and ladders, these can also produce dramatic colorwork and openwork effects. However, designing slip and tuck colorwork patterns is challenging due to the complex interactions between operations, yarns, and deformations. We present KnitScape, a browser-based tool for design and simulation of stitch patterns for knitting. KnitScape provides a design interface to specify 1) operation repeats, 2) color changes, and 3) needle positions. These inputs are used to build a graph of yarn topology and run a yarn-level spring simulation. This enables visualization of the deformation that arises from slip and tuck operations. Through its design tool and simulation, KnitScape enables rapid exploration of a complex colorwork design space. We demonstrate KnitScape with a series of example swatches.2024HTHannah Twigg-Smith et al.University of WashingtonShape-Changing Materials & 4D PrintingTextile Art & Craft DigitizationCHI
Tandem: Reproducible Digital Fabrication Workflows as Multimodal ProgramsExperimental digital fabrication workflows are increasingly common in human-computer interaction research, but are difficult to reproduce. We present Tandem, a software library that lets a fabricator implement an end-to-end fabrication workflow as a computational notebook program that others can run to physically reproduce the workflow. Tandem notebook programs read and write to CAD and CAM software, project augmented reality interfaces onto machines for manual interventions, and directly control fabrication machines. Fabricators can also denote potential mismatches between the physical and the digital as explicit assertions in code. Using two-sided CNC milling as an example, we demonstrate how to implement a complex workflow as a single program that can be re-run by others while supporting quality control and improving reproducibility.2024JOJasper Tran O'Leary et al.University of WashingtonDesktop 3D Printing & Personal FabricationLaser Cutting & Digital FabricationCircuit Making & Hardware PrototypingCHI
Dynamic Toolchains: Software Infrastructure for Digital Fabrication WorkflowsNew digital fabrication workflows require both software development and digital/physical material exploration. To support digital fabrication workflow development, we contribute infrastructure that prioritizes extensibility and iteration. Dynamic Toolchains are dataflow programs with event-driven feedback between interactive, stateful modules. We contribute a browser-based dataflow environment for running Dynamic Toolchains, a library of fabrication-oriented front- and back-end modules for design and machine control, and a development framework for building custom modules. Furthermore, we show how our infrastructure supports unconventional fabrication workflows with demonstrations that include interactive watercolor painting, map plotting, machine knitting, audio embroidery, textured 3d printing, and computer-controlled milling. These demonstrations show how our infrastructure supports multiple kinds of engagement including reuse, remix, and extension. Finally, we discuss how this work contributes to broader conversations in HCI on creativity across the digital/physical divide.2023HTHannah Twigg-Smith et al.Desktop 3D Printing & Personal FabricationLaser Cutting & Digital FabricationCircuit Making & Hardware PrototypingUIST
3D Printers Don't Fix Themselves: How Maintenance is Part of Digital FabricationDigital fabrication practice such as 3D printing has increasingly moved into home and hobbyist environments. Beyond running machines, practitioners in these settings undertake maintenance and repair. However, acquiring the skills necessary for machine maintenance is a non-trivial process contingent on experience, equipment, and materials. We seek to better understand how practitioners develop the skills necessary to maintain their 3D printers. We collect interview and survey data from active members of online 3D printing communities to conceptualize themes to characterize current maintenance practice. We find that maintenance is core to our participants' 3D printing practice: practitioners develop maintenance routines that formalize tacit understandings of fabrication processes, advance expertise during required acts of repair, and rely on hands-on testing to reconcile differences between physical prints and digital models. Given our findings, we argue for considering maintenance as a core part of digital fabrication, and discuss implications for the design of future digital fabrication systems.2023BSBlair Subbaraman et al.Desktop 3D Printing & Personal FabricationCircuit Making & Hardware PrototypingDIS
Vespidae: A Programming Framework for Developing Digital Fabrication WorkflowsDigital fabrication machines are controlled through code. Software that generates this code, such as slicers, often rely on abstractions that restrict practitioners from exploring the full design space. We contribute Vespidae, a programming framework for developing custom toolpaths and visualizations. Vespidae module types include Toolpaths, Actions, Solvers, and Export. These generate geometry, specify machine tasks, sort and visualize action sequences, and generate and stream machine code. We show example workflows that demonstrate Vespidae's strengths in supporting iteration and unconventional practice. These include non-planar 3D printing, varying a print's tactile qualities with under-extrusion, and exploring the design space of milling marks. Furthermore, we used Vespidae over the course of six months to explore multi-material 3D printing for energy storage devices on a custom machine. Finally, we discuss how Vespidae contributes to a movement in HCI arguing for human-machine collaboration.2023FFFrikk H Fossdal et al.Desktop 3D Printing & Personal FabricationCircuit Making & Hardware PrototypingDIS
Forking a Sketch: How the OpenProcessing Community Uses Remixing to Collect, Annotate, Tune, and Extend Creative CodeCreative coders create programs that generate visual output. Frameworks such as p5.js support sketching with creative code. Given the focus on expressivity over functionality, code reuse in creative coding practice is distinct from other programming contexts. Remixing facilitates iteration on existing code, but we have yet to understand how creative coders use remixing in practice. To understand creative coder remixing strategies, we studied the community of OpenProcessing, a site dedicated to sharing code-generated artworks. We found that 30% of the 1.2 million sketches in our data set were involved in remixing. For in-depth insight, we qualitatively analyze source code and visual output of 350 antecedent-remix pairs. We present on the diversity of ways that authors remix to curate projects, annotate process, explore variations, and transform existing sketches. We discuss the prevalence of these types and implications for supporting a multiplicity of remixing strategies in creative work.2023BSBlair Subbaraman et al.Creative Coding & Computational ArtCrowdsourcing Task Design & Quality ControlDIS
Doufu, Rice Wine, and 面饼: Supporting the Connections between Precision and Cultural Knowledge in CookingThe digital codification and measurement of food preparation has made strong contributions to HCI food research, whether through ingredient manipulation, workflow management, or recipe interaction. But prior work has shown that technical developments that emphasize precise gourmet practices tend to overlook the importance of cultural knowledge. Drawing on an integrative autobiographical design approach, we describe an open-source hardware toolkit that we developed to examine the process of integrating precision techniques with ritual cooking practices across three recipes: flour skin, rice wine, and doufu. Our work points to the importance of understanding precision as a cultural process with roots in personal and familial experience. We end with a reflection on the particular knowledge-forms that come from cultivating cultural relationships to fabrication processes and their implications for reading digital fabrication processes as meaningfully relational.2023DLDanli Luo et al.University of WashingtonUniversal & Inclusive DesignFood Culture & Food InteractionCHI
Imprimer: Computational Notebooks for CNC MillingDigital fabrication in industrial contexts involves standardized procedures that prioritize precision and repeatability. However, fabrication machines are now available for practitioners who focus instead on experimentation. In this paper, we reframe hobbyist CNC milling as writing literate programs which interleave documentation, interactive graphics, and source code for machine control. To test this approach, we present Imprimer, a machine infrastructure for a CNC mill and an associated library for a computational notebook. Imprimer lets makers learn experimentally, prototype new interactions for making, and understand physical processes by writing and debugging code. We demonstrate three experimental milling workflows as computational notebooks, conduct a user study with practitioners with a range of backgrounds, and discuss literate programming as a future vision for digital fabrication altogether.2023JOJasper Tran O'Leary et al.University of WashingtonDesktop 3D Printing & Personal FabricationCircuit Making & Hardware PrototypingCHI
Taxon: a Language for Formal Reasoning with Digital Fabrication MachinesDigital fabrication machines for makers have expanded access to manufacturing processes such as 3D printing, laser cutting, and milling. While digital models encode the data necessary for a ma- chine to manufacture an object, understanding the trade-offs and limitations of the machines themselves is crucial for successful production. Yet, this knowledge is not codified and must be gained through experience, which limits both adoption of and creative exploration with digital fabrication tools. To formally represent machines, we present Taxon, a language that encodes a machine’s high-level characteristics, physical composition, and performable actions. With this programmatic foundation, makers can develop rules of thumb that filter for appropriate machines for a given job and verify that actions are feasible and safe. We integrate the language with a browser-based system for simulating and experimenting with machine workflows. The system lets makers engage with rules of thumb and enrich their understanding of machines. We evaluate Taxon by representing several machines from both common practice and digital fabrication research. We find that while Taxon does not exhaustively describe all machines, it provides a starting point for makers and HCI researchers to develop tools for reasoning about and making decisions with machines.2021JOJasper Tran O'Leary et al.Desktop 3D Printing & Personal FabricationCircuit Making & Hardware PrototypingUIST
Remote Learners, Home Makers: How Digital Fabrication Was Taught Online During a PandemicDigital fabrication courses that relied on physical makerspaces were severely disrupted by COVID-19. As universities shut down in Spring 2020, instructors developed new models for digital fabrication at a distance. Through interviews with faculty and students and examination of course materials, we recount the experiences of eight remote digital fabrication courses. We found that learning with hobbyist equipment and online social networks could emulate using industrial equipment in shared workshops. Furthermore, at-home digital fabrication offered unique learning opportunities including more iteration, machine tuning, and maintenance. These opportunities depended on new forms of labor and varied based on student living situations. Our findings have implications for remote and in-person digital fabrication instruction. They indicate how access to tools was important, but not as critical as providing opportunities for iteration; they show how remote fabrication exacerbated student inequities; and they suggest strategies for evaluating trade-offs in remote fabrication models with respect to learning objectives.2021GBGabrielle Benabdallah et al.University of WashingtonAging-Friendly Technology DesignLaser Cutting & Digital FabricationMakerspace CultureCHI
Tools, Tricks, and Hacks: Exploring Novel Digital Fabrication Workflows on #PlotterTwitterAs digital fabrication machines become widespread, online communities have provided space for diverse practitioners to share their work, troubleshoot, and socialize. These communities pioneer increasingly novel fabrication workflows, and it is critical that we understand and conceptualize these workflows beyond traditional manufacturing models. To this end, we conduct a qualitative study of \textbf{\#PlotterTwitter}, an online community developing custom hardware and software tools to create artwork with computer-controlled drawing machines known as plotters. We documented and analyzed emergent themes where the traditional interpretation of digital fabrication workflows fails to capture important nuances and nascent directions. We find that \#PlotterTwitter makers champion creative exploration of interwoven digital and physical materials over a predictable series of steps. We discuss how this challenges long-running views of digital fabrication and propose design implications for future frameworks and toolkits to account for this breadth of practice.2021HTHannah Rose Twigg-Smith et al.University of WashingtonDesktop 3D Printing & Personal FabricationMakerspace CultureCHI
LamiFold: Fabricating Objects with Integrated Mechanisms Using a Laser cutter Lamination WorkflowWe present LamiFold, a novel design and fabrication workflow for making functional mechanical objects using a laser cutter. Objects fabricated with LamiFold embed advanced rotary, linear, and chained mechanisms, including linkages that support fine-tuning and locking position. Laser cutting such mechanisms without LamiFold requires designing for and embedding off-the-shelf parts such as springs, bolts, and axles for gears. The key to laser cutting our functional mechanisms is the selective cutting and gluing of stacks of sheet material. Designing mechanisms for this workflow is non-trivial, therefore we contribute a set of mechanical primitives that are compatible with our lamination workflow and can be combined to realize advanced mechanical systems. Our software design environment facilitates the process of inserting and composing our mechanical primitives and realizing functional laser-cut objects.2020DLDanny Leen et al.Laser Cutting & Digital FabricationCircuit Making & Hardware PrototypingUIST
Jubilee: An Extensible Machine for Multi-tool FabricationWe present Jubilee, an open-source hardware machine with automatic tool-changing and interchangeable bed plates. As digital fabrication tools have become more broadly accessible, tailoring those machines to new users and novel workflows has become central to HCI research. However, the lack of hardware infrastructure makes custom application development cumbersome. We identify a need for an extensible platform to allow HCI researchers to develop workflows for fabrication, material exploration, and other applications. Jubilee addresses this need. It can automatically and repeatably change tools in the same operation. It can be built with a combination of simple 3D-printed and readily available parts. It has several standard head designs for a variety of applications including 3D printing, syringe-based liquid handling, imaging, and plotting. We present Jubilee with a comprehensive set of assembly instructions and kinematic mount templates for user-designed tools and bed plates. Finally we demonstrate Jubilee's multi-tool workflow functionality with a series of example applications.2020JVJoshua Vasquez et al.University of WashingtonDesktop 3D Printing & Personal FabricationLaser Cutting & Digital FabricationCHI