Magnetform: A Shape-change Display Toolkit for Material-oriented Designers

Abstract

This work presents Magnetform, a shape-change display toolkit designed to enable exploration of movement in soft materials. The toolkit allows designers with no technical knowledge to leverage their material expertise to experiment with shape-change. We present the toolkit design, and case studies with two design studios who used the toolkit for 15-days each. Through the presentation of their process, we reflect on two main themes: empowering designers to participate in shape-change exploration; and the developing practice of designing objects which integrate motion. We situate this work as part of the growing efforts in the TEI community to involve designers in the evolution of shape-changing interfaces, and demonstrate how material-oriented designers could contribute to this field in which materiality plays a major role in.