MorpheesPlug: A Toolkit for Prototyping Shape-Changing Interfaces

Abstract

Toolkits for shape-changing interfaces (SCIs) enable designers and researchers to easily explore the broad design space of SCIs. However, despite their utility, existing approaches are often limited in the number of shape-change features they can express. This paper introduces MorpheesPlug , a toolkit for creating SCIs that covers seven of the eleven shape-change features identified in the literature. MorpheesPlug is comprised of (1) a set of six standardized widgets that express the shape-change features with user-definable parameters; (2) software for 3D-modeling the widgets to create 3D-printable pneumatic SCIs; and (3) a hardware platform to control the widgets. To evaluate MorpheesPlug we carried out ten open-ended interviews with novice and expert designers who were asked to design a SCI using our software. Participants highlighted the ease of use and expressivity of the MorpheesPlug.