research-article

Open access

CurveBoards: Integrating Breadboards into Physical Objects to Prototype Function in the Context of Form

Authors:

Lotta-Gili Blumberg,

Ethan Levi Carlson,

Jessica Ayeley Quaye,

Stefanie MuellerAuthors Info & Claims

CHI '20: Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Pages 1 - 13

https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376617

Published: 23 April 2020 Publication History

All formats PDF

Abstract

CurveBoards are breadboards integrated into physical objects. In contrast to traditional breadboards, CurveBoards better preserve the object's look and feel while maintaining high circuit fluidity, which enables designers to exchange and reposition components during design iteration. Since CurveBoards are fully functional, i.e., the screens are displaying content and the buttons take user input, designers can test interactive scenarios and log interaction data on the physical prototype while still being able to make changes to the component layout and circuit design as needed. We present an interactive editor that enables users to convert 3D models into CurveBoards and discuss our fabrication technique for making CurveBoard prototypes. We also provide a technical evaluation of CurveBoard's conductivity and durability and summarize informal user feedback.

Supplementary Material

MP4 File (paper490vf.mp4)

Supplemental video

Download
307.17 MB

MP4 File (paper490pv.mp4)

Preview video

Download
11.67 MB

References

[1]

Fraser Anderson, Tovi Grossman, and George Fitzmau-rice. Trigger-Action-Circuits: Leveraging Generative Design to Enable Novices to Design and Build Circuit-ry. In Proceedings of the 30th Annual ACM Symposi-um on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '17), 331--342.

[2]

Patrick Baudisch and Stefanie Mueller. Personal Fabri-cation. In Foundations and Trends® in Human--Computer Interaction 10, 3--4, 165--293, 2017.

[3]

Jesse Burstyn, Nicholas Fellion, Paul Strohmeier, Roel Vertegaal. PrintPut: Resistive and Capacitive In-put Widgets for Interactive 3D Prints. In Proceedings of INTERACT 2015, 332--339.

[4]

Carbon Fibre: https://en.procotex.com/products/technical-fibres/carbon.php

[5]

Conductive Rubber Breadboard: https://www.instructables.com/id/Rubber-Breadboard-Silicone-Circuit/

[6]

Kayla DesPortes, Aditya Anupam, Neeti Pathak, and Betsy DiSalvo. BitBlox: A Redesign of the Bread-board. In Proceedings of the The 15th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC '16), 255--261.

[7]

Dodecahedral Protoboard. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5750/comments

[8]

Daniel Drew, Julie L. Newcomb, William McGrath, Filip Maksimovic, David Mellis, and Björn Hartmann. The Toastboard: Ubiquitous Instrumentation and Au-tomated Checking of Breadboarded Circuits. In Pro-ceedings of the 29th Annual Symposium on User Inter-face Software and Technology (UIST '16), 677--686.

[9]

Daniel Groeger and Jürgen Steimle. ObjectSkin: Aug-menting Everyday Objects with Hydroprinted Touch Sensors and Displays. Proceedings of ACM Interact. Mob. Wearable Ubiquitous Technol. 1, 4, Article 134, 2018.

Digital Library

[10]

Bjarki Hallgrimsson. Prototyping and Modelmaking for Product Design (Portfolio Skills). Portfolio skills edition ed., Laurence King Publishing, 2012.

[11]

Instant Meshes. https://github.com/wjakob/instant-meshes

[12]

Michael D. Jones, Zann Anderson, Casey Walker, and Kevin Seppi. PHUI-kit: Interface Layout and Fabrica-tion on Curved 3D Printed Objects. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Com-puting Systems (CHI '18), Paper 110.

[13]

Yvonne Jansen, Pierre Dragicevic, and Jean-Daniel Fekete. Evaluating the Efficiency of Physical Visuali-zations. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '13), 2593--2602.

[14]

Wenzel Jakob, Marco Tarini, Daniele Panozzo, and Olga Sorkine-Hornung. Instant field-aligned meshes. In ACM Transactions on Graphics 34, 6, Article 189, 2015.

Digital Library

[15]

Yoshihiro Kawahara, Steve Hodges, Benjamin S. Cook, Cheng Zhang, and Gregory D. Abowd. Instant inkjet circuits: lab-based inkjet printing to support rap-id prototyping of UbiComp devices. In Proceedings of the 2013 ACM International Joint Conference on Per-vasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp '13), 363--372.

[16]

Leah Buechley, Mike Eisenberg, Jaime Catchen, and Ali Crockett. The LilyPad Arduino: using computa-tional textiles to investigate engagement, aesthetics, and diversity in computer science education. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '08), 423--432.

[17]

LilyPad Protoboard. https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9102

[18]

Jo-Yu Lo, Da-Yuan Huang, Tzu-Sheng Kuo, Chen-Kuo Sun, Jun Gong, Teddy Seyed, Xing-Dong Yang, and Bing-Yu Chen. AutoFritz: Autocomplete for Pro-totyping Virtual Breadboard Circuits. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '19), Paper 403.

[19]

David A. Mellis, Sam Jacoby, Leah Buechley, Hannah Perner-Wilson, and Jie Qi. Microcontrollers as Materi-al: Crafting Circuits with Paper, Conductive Ink, Elec-tronic Components, and an "Untoolkit". In Proceed-ings of the 7th International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI '13), 83--90.

[20]

Steven Nagels, Raf Ramakers, Kris Luyten, and Wim Deferme. Silicone Devices: A Scalable DIY Approach for Fabricating Self-Contained Multi-Layered Soft Cir-cuits using Microfluidics. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Sys-tems (CHI '18), Paper 188.

[21]

Yoichi Ochiai. The Visible Electricity Device: Visible Breadboard. In ACM SIGGRAPH 2010 Posters (SIGGRAPH '10), Article 98.

[22]

Simon Olberding, Michael Wessely, and Jürgen Steimle. PrintScreen: Fabricating Highly Customizable Thin-Film Touch-Displays. In Proceedings of the 27th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '14), 281--290.

[23]

Ronald J. Portugal. Breadboard for Electronic Compo-nents or the Like. US Patent D228, 136, 1973.

[24]

Raf Ramakers, Fraser Anderson, Tovi Grossman, and George Fitzmaurice. RetroFab: A Design Tool for Ret-rofitting Physical Interfaces using Actuators, Sensors and 3D Printing. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Con-ference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16), 409--419.

[25]

Claudia Daudén Roquet, Jeeeun Kim, and Tom Yeh. 3D Folded PrintGami: Transforming Passive 3D Print-ed Objects to Interactive by Inserted Paper Origami Circuits. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS '16), 187--191.

[26]

David J. Roedl and Erik Stolterman. Design research at CHI and its applicability to design practice. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '13), 1951--1954.

[27]

Evan Strasnick. Circuit Design Tools for Exploratory Understanding. In The Adjunct Publication of the 32nd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '19), 150--153.

[28]

Tomasz Sachanowicz. 2019. Creativity and Use of Physical Models in Architectural Design. IOP Confer-ence Series: Materials Science and Engineering 471 (feb 2019), 082072.

[29]

Martin Schmitz, Mohammadreza Khalilbeigi, Matthias Balwierz, Roman Lissermann, Max Mühlhäuser, and Jürgen Steimle. Capricate: A Fabrication Pipeline to Design and 3D Print Capacitive Touch Sensors for In-teractive Objects. In Proceedings of the 28th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software & Tech-nology (UIST '15), 253--258.

[30]

Saiganesh Swaminathan, Kadri Bugra Ozutemiz, Car-mel Majidi, and Scott E. Hudson. FiberWire: Embed-ding Electronic Function into 3D Printed Mechanically Strong, Lightweight Carbon Fiber Composite Objects. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '19), Paper 567.

[31]

Martin Schmitz, Jürgen Steimle, Jochen Huber, Niloo-far Dezfuli, and Max Mühlhäuser. Flexibles: Defor-mation-Aware 3D-Printed Tangibles for Capacitive Touchscreens. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Confer-ence on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '17), 1001--1014.

[32]

Martin Schmitz, Martin Stitz, Florian Müller, Markus Funk, and Max Mühlhäuser. ./trilaterate: A Fabrication Pipeline to Design and 3D Print Hover-, Touch-, and Force-Sensitive Objects. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Sys-tems (CHI '19), Paper 454.

[33]

Valkyrie Savage, Xiaohan Zhang, and Björn Hartmann. Midas: Fabricating Custom Capacitive Touch Sensors to Prototype Interactive Objects. In Proceedings of the 25th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Soft-ware and Technology (UIST '12), 579--588.

[34]

Sorta Clear. https://www.smooth-on.com/product-line/sorta-clear/

[35]

Sparkfun ProtoBoard Penta Shape. https://www.sparkfun.com/products/retired/8847

[36]

Sparkfun ProtoBoard Hex Shape. https://www.sparkfun.com/products/retired/8885

[37]

Koji Tsukada, Maho Oki, Takafumi Yamamoto, and Tomohiro Imaizumi. CARduino: Device Toolkit Suit-able for Use in Automobiles. In Adjunct Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing and Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Symposium on Weara-ble Computers (UbiComp/ISWC'15 Adjunct), 407--410.

[38]

Nubuyuki Umetani and Ryan Schmidt. SurfCuit: Sur-face-Mounted Circuits on 3D Prints. In IEEE Comput-er Graphics and Applications, vol. 37, no. 3, 52--60, May-June 2017.

Digital Library

[39]

Nicolas Villar, Kiel Mark Gilleade, Devina Ramduny-Ellis, and Hans Gellersen. The VoodooIO Gaming Kit: A Real-Time Adaptable Gaming Controller. In Pro-ceedings of the 2006 ACM SIGCHI International Con-ference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Tech-nology (ACE '06), Article 1.

[40]

Chiuan Wang, Hsuan-Ming Yeh, Bryan Wang, Te-Yen Wu, Hsin-Ruey Tsai, Rong-Hao Liang, Yi-Ping Hung, and Mike Y. Chen. CircuitStack: Supporting Rapid Prototyping and Evolution of Electronic Circuits. In Proceedings of the 29th Annual Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '16), 687--695.

[41]

Christian Weichel, Manfred Lau, and Hans Gellersen. Enclosed: a component-centric interface for designing prototype enclosures. In Proceedings of the 7th Inter-national Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Em-bodied Interaction (TEI '13), 215--218.

[42]

Michael Wessely, Theophanis Tsandilas, and Wendy E. Mackay. Stretchis: Fabricating Highly Stretchable User Interfaces. In Proceedings of the 29th Annual Symposium on User Interface Software and Technolo-gy (UIST '16), 697--704.

[43]

Te-Yen Wu, Hao-Ping Shen, Yu-Chian Wu, Yu-An Chen, Pin-Sung Ku, Ming-Wei Hsu, Jun-You Liu, Yu-Chih Lin, and Mike Y. Chen. CurrentViz: Sensing and Visualizing Electric Current Flows of Breadboard-ed Circuits. In Proceedings of the 30th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technolo-gy (UIST '17), 343--349.

[44]

Te-Yen Wu, Bryan Wang, Jiun-Yu Lee, Hao-Ping Shen, Yu-Chian Wu, Yu-An Chen, Pin-Sung Ku, Ming-Wei Hsu, Yu-Chih Lin, and Mike Y. Chen. Cir-cuitSense: Automatic Sensing of Physical Circuits and Generation of Virtual Circuits to Support Software Tools. In Proceedings of the 30th Annual ACM Sym-posium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '17), 311--319.

[45]

Junichi Yamaoka, Mustafa Doga Dogan, Katarina Bulovic, Kazuya Saito, Yoshihiro Kawahara, Yasuaki Kakehi, and Stefanie Mueller. FoldTronics: Creating 3D Objects with Integrated Electronics Using Foldable Honeycomb Structures. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Sys-tems (CHI '19), Paper 628.

[46]

Junyi Zhu. A Software Pipeline for Converting 3D Models into 3D Breadboards. MIT Libraries. 2019.

Cited By

Palma GPourjafarian NSteimle JCignoni P(2024)Capacitive Touch Sensing on General 3D SurfacesACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/365818543:4(1-20)Online publication date: 19-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3658185
Li XYao CShi SFeng SZhou YDong HHuang SCai XJin KYing FWang G(2024)E-Joint: Fabrication of Large-Scale Interactive Objects Assembled by 3D Printed Conductive Parts with Copper Plated JointsProceedings of the 37th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3654777.3676398(1-18)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3654777.3676398
Duente TSchrapel MSchulte JJanßen NAl-Azzawi IDemir KRohs M(2024)A Touch of Gold - Spraying and Electroplating 3D Prints to Create Biocompatible On-Skin WearablesAdjunct Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Mobile Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3640471.3680227(1-7)Online publication date: 21-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3640471.3680227
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

CurveBoards: Integrating Breadboards into Physical Objects to Prototype Function in the Context of Form
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)

Recommendations

FlexBoard: A Flexible Breadboard for Interaction Prototyping on Curved and Deformable Surfaces
CHI '23: Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

We present FlexBoard, an interaction prototyping platform that enables rapid prototyping with interactive components such as sensors, actuators and displays on curved and deformable objects. FlexBoard offers the rapid prototyping capabilities of ...
CurveBoards Demo: Integrating Breadboards into Physical Objects to Prototype Function in the Context of Form
CHI EA '20: Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

CurveBoards are breadboards integrated into physical objects. In contrast to traditional breadboards, CurveBoards better preserve the object's look and feel while maintaining high circuit fluidity, which enables designers to exchange and reposition ...
Demonstration of FlexBoard: A Flexible Breadboard Platform for Interaction Prototyping on Curved and Deformable Objects
CHI EA '23: Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

We demonstrate FlexBoard, a flexible breadboard that enables interaction prototyping with electronic components such as sensors, actuators, and displays on curved and deformable objects. We show how FlexBoard offers flexible and bidirectional bending ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CHI '20: Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 2020

10688 pages

ISBN:9781450367080

DOI:10.1145/3313831

General Chairs:
Regina Bernhaupt
Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands
,
Florian 'Floyd' Mueller
Monash University, Australia
,
David Verweij
Newcastle University, UK
,
Josh Andres
RMIT, Australia
,
Program Chairs:
Joanna McGrenere
University of British Columbia, Canada
,
Andy Cockburn
University of Canterbury, New Zealand
,
Ignacio Avellino
University of Maryland Baltimore County, USA
,
Alix Goguey
Grenoble Alpes University, France
,
Pernille Bjørn
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
,
Shengdong (Shen) Zhao
National University of Singapore, Singapore
,
Briane Paul Samson
Future University Hakodate, Japan & De La Salle University, Philippines
,
Rafal Kocielnik
University of Washington, USA

Copyright © 2020 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 23 April 2020

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

CHI '20

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

CHI '20: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 25 - 30, 2020

HI, Honolulu, USA

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 6,199 of 26,314 submissions, 24%

Upcoming Conference

CHI 2025

Sponsor:
sigchi

ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 26 - May 1, 2025

Yokohama , Japan

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

29
Total Citations
View Citations
1,286
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)421
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)52

Reflects downloads up to 14 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Palma GPourjafarian NSteimle JCignoni P(2024)Capacitive Touch Sensing on General 3D SurfacesACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/365818543:4(1-20)Online publication date: 19-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3658185
Li XYao CShi SFeng SZhou YDong HHuang SCai XJin KYing FWang G(2024)E-Joint: Fabrication of Large-Scale Interactive Objects Assembled by 3D Printed Conductive Parts with Copper Plated JointsProceedings of the 37th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3654777.3676398(1-18)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3654777.3676398
Duente TSchrapel MSchulte JJanßen NAl-Azzawi IDemir KRohs M(2024)A Touch of Gold - Spraying and Electroplating 3D Prints to Create Biocompatible On-Skin WearablesAdjunct Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Mobile Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3640471.3680227(1-7)Online publication date: 21-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3640471.3680227
Lin YJo J(2024)LeatherBoard: Sustainable On-body Rapid Prototyping with Leather Scraps and Machine EmbroideryExtended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3650894(1-7)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613905.3650894
Yan ZLi JZhang ZPeng H(2024)SolderlessPCB: Reusing Electronic Components in PCB Prototyping through Detachable 3D Printed HousingsProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642765(1-17)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642765
Hanton OFraser MRoudaut A(2024)DisplayFab: The State of the Art and a Roadmap in the Personal Fabrication of Free-Form Displays Using Active Materials and Additive Manufacturing.Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642708(1-24)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642708
Luo YZhu JWu KHonnet CMueller SMatusik W(2023)MagKnitic: Machine-knitted Passive and Interactive Haptic Textiles with Integrated Binary SensingProceedings of the 36th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3586183.3606765(1-13)Online publication date: 29-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3586183.3606765
Hartley KFinney JHodges SDe Halleux PDevine JD'Amone G(2023)MakeDevice: Evolving Devices Beyond the Prototype with JacdacProceedings of the Seventeenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3569009.3573106(1-7)Online publication date: 26-Feb-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3569009.3573106
Ko DKim YZhu JWessely MMueller S(2023)Demonstration of FlexBoard: A Flexible Breadboard Platform for Interaction Prototyping on Curved and Deformable ObjectsExtended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544549.3583915(1-4)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544549.3583915
Savage VHomewood SShklovski I(2023)Objectify: Better Living Through Anticipatory, Just-for-you 3D Printing!Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544549.3582748(1-8)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544549.3582748
Show More Cited By

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

HTML Format

View this article in HTML Format.

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents