Published: June 21, 2022

The different lifecycles of biofoam

Living Matter Lab/Unstable Design Lab

Exploring biofoam as a Material for Tangible Interaction, authored by Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez, Netta Ofer, Shanel Wu, Mary Etta West, Mirela Alistar and Laura Devendorf 听introduced听the DIS audience to biofoam, a water soluble and biodegradable material that听can be made conductive.

During the DIS鈥22 Multisensory Design session, lead author, Lazaro, an ATLAS PhD student, presented the team's biofoam research and demonstrated听the unique opportunities the material brings to HCI communities. 听Vasquez described the material in detail, including the process of making biofoam from scratch and fabricating the material听into forms with handcraft techniques. She also presented two HCI-specific applications of biofoam and demonstrated听the different life cycles of the material, all of which can be considered in the design process;听biofoam can be cooked, molded, layered, extruded, dissolved and听recooked.

Publication

Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez, Netta Ofer, Shanel Wu, Mary Etta West, Mirela Alistar and Laura Devendorf. 2022. Exploring Biofoam as a Material for Tangible Interaction. In Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS 鈥22), Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1525-1529. (June 13-17, 2022鈥擵irtual Event, Australia).听