The prototyping process for e-textile circuits presents unique challenges, as traditional electronic prototyping tools are often rigid and incompatible with the flexible nature of fabric. In this paper, we document the iterative design of FabricBoards, a set of fabric-based breadboards designed for e-textile LED circuits. FabricBoards reimagine the solderless breadboard in a textile-based form, using tools and materials native to textile crafting, inviting and accessible to historically underrepresented makers. We experimented with various textile crafts including machine-sewing, felting, knitting, crocheting, digital embroidery, and weaving a breadboard. Our user study with 18 participants consisted of group workshops for ideation and individual interviews. A thematic analysis revealed four themes on the user experience of FabricBoards in terms of familiarity, materiality, and layout; the inherent incompatibility of electronic components with textiles; and the curiosity and engagement that FabricBoards evoke. Finally, we reflect with generalizable insights on computational making when reimagining e-textile breadboards.
This paper presents a longitudinal autoethnography of developing performance practice with a movement-based digital instrument. This instrument extends the human body and enables performers to express musical aesthetics through their movement. What started as a design practice and understanding the boundaries of performer roles, primarily between musicians and dancers, has resulted in extended periods of personal practice over five years. Through this performance-led autoethnography, I investigate how long-term engagement with technology supports the evolution of bodily sensitivities, enhances attunement to the performance ecology, and informs design transformations. Based on a reflexive thematic analysis of field notes, documentation materials (i.e., audio, video recordings, compositions, and scores), and journal entries, maintaining a creative practice through self-reflexivity revealed intimate connections with the researcher's own body, as well as with other performing bodies beyond technology. This autoethnography contributes to HCI by demonstrating how embracing nonlinear processes, temporal dissonances, and aesthetic misalignments can cultivate design transformations.
We present FlueBricks, a construction kit for acoustic reasoning via building and customizing flute-like instruments. By assembling generator, resonator, and connector modules that embody various aeroacoustic properties, users gain deeper understanding of how blowhole, tube length, and tone-hole placement alter onset, pitch, and timbre through hands-on experimentation. This forms a designer-player loop of configuring and playing to form, test, and refine acoustic behaviors-acoustic reasoning-shifting acoustic instruments from static artifacts to dynamic systems.To understand how users engage with this system, we conducted an exploratory study with 12 participants ranging from novices to professional musicians. During their explorations, we observed participants fluently switching between designer and player roles, scaffolding designs from familiar instruments, forming and refining their acoustic understanding of length, tone holes, and generator geometry, reinterpreting modules beyond their intended functions, and using their creations for performative acts such as pedagogical showing and musical expression. These collectively demonstrated FlueBricks's potential as a pedagogical tool for embodied acoustic reasoning.
Digital media operates on a curious boundary between storage and loss. While each new storage format promises a permanent solution to our exponentially expanding media libraries, they inevitably fail or otherwise become unusable. This paper reflects on a long-term design process that attempts to bring a different paradigm to the experience of personal digital media: destruction. We present an annotated portfolio of a set of sound listening devices, critically unpacking the particular temporal, perceptual, and experiential qualities that emerge when designing for the loss of personal media. These annotations show how destruction comes to matter in designing against the traditional bias towards growth and accumulation in HCI.
Hip-hop dance battles are events where dancers improvise to an unfamiliar DJ’s mix. The dancers’ technicality in responding to the music, along with the collective dimensions of these encounters, represents a largely unexplored area of investigation in HCI. Using an autobiographical design approach grounded in the hip-hop practice of the first author, we developed five interaction scenarios on a hip-hop–specific movement vocabulary. Our interactive sonification enables both individual and collective improvisation through synchronized motion sensing and interactive sound loops. This approach allowed us to design three interconnected workshops to investigate how dancers use sonification in improvisation. Our findings show that sonification was perceived either as a validation of movement or as a medium for open-ended exploration. We contribute with: (1) the formalization of a movement vocabulary and the design of interactive scenarios for hip-hop movement sonification, (2) insights into how dancers experience sonification through exploration and improvisation, and (3) guidelines for the design of movement sonification in hip-hop contexts.
Makerspaces offer opportunities for creative and technology-rich learning, yet their design often overlooks the needs of youth with autism. While inclusive education research has emphasized structured teaching and multimodal engagement, less is known about how spatial, sensory, and cultural factors intersect with pedagogy in makerspace contexts. To address this gap, we conducted interviews with special education staff, including teachers, assistants, and therapists, alongside focus groups with educators and architects, and a panel with disability advocates and special education experts on accessibility in makerspaces and informal learning. Our analysis identified six themes highlighting strategies for predictability, multimodal engagement, and cultural resonance to create inclusive makerspaces. These findings position makerspaces not only as sites for technical skill development but also as infrastructures of belonging and empowerment. Based on our findings, we offer guidance for educators, designers, and policymakers seeking to create accessible, community-engaged spaces that support the participation of youth with autism.