CAREER: On-Skin Interface Prototyping Toolkits: Democratizing Next Generation Wearable Computing

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This project will investigate on-skin interfaces, an emerging, next generation form of wearable computing. On-skin interfaces come in forms such as smart tattoos and bandages. They expand the sensing capabilities of current mobile and wearable devices by facilitating direct access to signals that represent people’s physiology. This technology holds promise for realizing the vision of an "invisible computer" for pervasive healthcare, elderly assisted living, the future of work, and national defense. While prior on-skin interfaces have suggested benefits to society, the difficulty of prototyping on-skin interfaces is limiting progress in this nascent, yet potentially transformative field. The project will advance the prototyping, design, and use of on-skin interfaces through the development of toolkits that combine traditional crafting methods and unorthodox materials, with digital fabrication techniques and electronics. It will incorporate diverse perspectives, outside of laboratory settings, for the design of social interactions, form factors, and applications. It will bring scientists, engineers, and artists together to invent the future of human experiences of on-skin technologies. The investigation will introduce young girls and rural area youth to interdisciplinary STEM learning through on-skin interface workshops using the developed toolkits. Novel collaborative programs with craftspeople and artists, and teaching innovation at the graduate and undergraduate level will contribute to educating new STEM workers, who combine on-body design with emerging miniaturized technology. This project will hybridize digital and physical realms, connect cultural and technological materials, and blend craft, computing, and electronics. It will investigate innovative wearable computing through these research aims: (1) construction toolkits that enable populations previously without access to electronics development to prototype on-skin interface applications; (2) novel fabrication processes that blend readily accessible textile and paper materials with emerging slim electronics for rapid prototyping of on-skin interfaces; and (3) novel programs for transdisciplinary collaboration between STEM researchers and craftspeople. The research aims will be evaluated through (1) wearability and durability studies of the developed tools; and (2) workshop studies that provide novel assessments of how diverse populations build on-skin interfaces, including how they approach the process, the type of applications they want to build, how they envision the technologies integrated in everyday life, and the STEM-related skills they develop through the making process.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.