Pushables: A DIY Approach for Fabricating Customizable and Self-Contained Tactile Membrane Dome Switches

Abstract

Momentary switches are important building blocks to prototype novel physical user interfaces and enable tactile, explicit and eyes-free interactions. Unfortunately, typical representatives, such as push-buttons or pre-manufactured membrane switches, often do not fulfill individual design requirements and lack customization options for rapid prototyping. With this work, we present Pushables, a DIY fabrication approach for producing thin, bendable and highly customizable membrane dome switches. Therefore, we contribute a three-stage fabrication pipeline that describes the production and assembly on the basis of prototyping methods with different skill levels making our approach suitable for technology-enthusiastic makers, researchers, fab labs and others who require custom membrane switches in small quantities. To demonstrate the wide applicability of Pushables, we present application examples from ubiquitous, mobile and wearable computing.