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One essential function of professional events, such as industry trade shows and academic conferences, is to foster and extend a person's connections to others within the community of their interest. In this paper, we delve into the emerging practice transitioning these events from physical venues to social VR as a new medium. Specifically, we ask: how does the spatial design in social VR affect the attendee's networking behaviors and experiences at these events? To answer this question, we conducted in-situ observations and in-depth interviews with 13 participants. Each of them had attended or hosted at least one real-world professional event taking place in social VR. We identified four elements of VR spatial design that shaped social interactions at these events: area size, which influenced a person's perceived likelihood of encountering others; pathways connecting areas, which guided their planning of the next activity to perform; magnets in areas, which facilitated spontaneous gatherings among people; and conventionality, which affected the assessment of a person's behavior appropriateness. Some of these elements were interpreted differently depending on the role of the participant, i.e., event hosts vs. attendees. We concluded this paper with multiple design implications derived from our findings.

Perceiving spatial information of a virtual object (e.g., direction, distance) is critical yet challenging for blind users seeking an immersive virtual reality experience. To facilitate VR accessibility for blind users, in this paper, we investigate the effectiveness of two types of haptic cues--vibrotactile and skin-stretch cues--in conveying the spatial information of a virtual object when applied to the dorsal side of a blind user's hand. We conducted a user study with 10 blind users to investigate how they perceive static and moving objects in VR with a custom-made haptic apparatus. Our results reveal that blind users can more accurately understand an object's location and movement when receiving skin-stretch cues, as opposed to vibrotactile cues. We discuss the pros and cons of both types of haptic cues and conclude with design recommendations for future haptic solutions for VR accessibility.

We propose JetUnit, a water-based VR haptic system designed to produce force feedback with a wide spectrum of intensities and frequencies through water jets. The key challenge in designing this system lies in optimizing parameters to enable the haptic device to generate force feedback that closely replicates the most intense force produced by direct water jets while ensuring the user remains dry. In this paper, we present the key design parameters of the JetUnit wearable device determined through a set of quantitative experiments and a perception study. We further conducted a user study to assess the impact of integrating our haptic solutions into virtual reality experiences. The results revealed that, by adhering to the design principles of JetUnit, the water-based haptic system is capable of delivering diverse force feedback sensations, significantly enhancing the immersive experience in virtual reality.

The iterative prototyping process for printed circuit boards (PCBs) frequently employs surface-mounted device (SMD) components, which are often discarded rather than reused due to the challenges associated with desoldering, leading to unnecessary electronic waste. This paper introduces SolderlessPCB, a collection of techniques for solder-free PCB prototyping, specifically designed to promote the recycling and reuse of electronic components. Central to this approach are custom 3D-printable housings that allow SMD components to be mounted onto PCBs without soldering. We detail the design of SolderlessPCB and the experiments conducted to evaluate its design parameters, electrical performance, and durability. To illustrate the potential for reusing SMD components with SolderlessPCB, we discuss two scenarios: the reuse of components from earlier design iterations and from obsolete prototypes. We also provide examples demonstrating that SolderlessPCB can handle high-current applications and is suitable for high-speed data transmission. The paper concludes by discussing the limitations of our approach and suggesting future directions to overcome these challenges.

The accuracy of 3D Human Pose and Shape reconstruction (HPS) from an image is progressively improving. Yet, no known method is robust across all image distortion. To address issues due to variations of camera poses, we introduce SHARE, a novel fine-tuning method that utilizes adversarial data augmentation to enhance the robustness of existing HPS techniques. We perform a comprehensive analysis on the impact of camera poses on HPS reconstruction outcomes. We first generated large-scale image datasets captured systematically from diverse camera perspectives. We then established a mapping between camera poses and reconstruction errors as a continuous function that characterizes the relationship between camera poses and HPS quality. Leveraging this representation, we introduce RoME (Regions of Maximal Error), a novel sampling technique for our adversarial fine-tuning method. The SHARE framework is generalizable across various single-view HPS methods and we demonstrate its performance on HMR, SPIN, PARE, CLIFF and ExPose. Our results illustrate a reduction in mean joint errors across single-view HPS techniques, for images captured from multiple camera positions without compromising their baseline performance. In many challenging cases, our method surpasses the performance of existing models, highlighting its practical significance for diverse real-world applications.

We present a pipeline for printing interactive and always-on magnetophoretic displays using affordable Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) 3D printers. Using our pipeline, an end-user can convert the surface of a 3D shape into a matrix of voxels. The generated model can be sent to an FDM 3D printer equipped with an additional syringe-based injector. During the printing process, an oil and iron powder-based liquid mixture is injected into each voxel cell, allowing the appearance of the once-printed object to be editable with external magnetic sources. To achieve this, we made modifications to the 3D printer hardware and the firmware. We also developed a 3D editor to prepare printable models. We demonstrate our pipeline with a variety of examples, including a printed Stanford bunny with customizable appearances, a small espresso mug that can be used as a post-it note surface, a board game figurine with a computationally updated display, and a collection of flexible wearable accessories with editable visuals.

Despite their growing popularity, many public kiosks with touchscreens are inaccessible to blind people. Toucha11y is a working prototype that allows blind users to use existing inaccessible touchscreen kiosks independently and with little effort. Toucha11y consists of a mechanical bot that can be instrumented to an arbitrary touchscreen kiosk by a blind user and a companion app on their smartphone. The bot, once attached to a touchscreen, will recognize its content, retrieve the corresponding information from a database, and render it on the user's smartphone. As a result, a blind person can use the smartphone's built-in accessibility features to access content and make selections. The mechanical bot will detect and activate the corresponding touchscreen interface. We present the system design of Toucha11y along with a series of technical evaluations. Through a user study, we found out that Toucha11y could help blind users operate inaccessible touchscreen devices.

Prototyping compact devices with unique form factors often requires the PCB manufacturing process to be outsourced, which can be expensive and time-consuming. In this paper, we present Fibercuit, a set of rapid prototyping techniques to fabricate high-resolution, flexible circuits on-demand using a fiber laser engraver. We showcase techniques that can laser cut copper-based composites to form fine-pitch conductive traces, laser fold copper substrates that can form kirigami structures, and laser solder surface-mount electrical components using off-the-shelf soldering pastes. Combined with our software pipeline, an end user can design and fabricate flexible circuits which are dual-layer and three-dimensional, thereby exhibiting a wide range of form factors. We demonstrate Fibercuit by showcasing a set of examples, including a custom dice, flex cables, custom end-stop switches, electromagnetic coils, LED earrings and a circuit in the form of kirigami crane.

We explore Calico, a miniature relocatable wearable system with fast and precise locomotion for on-body interaction, actuation and sensing. Calico consists of a two-wheel robot and an on-cloth track mechanism or "railway," on which the robot travels. The robot is self-contained, small in size, and has additional sensor expansion options. The track system allows the robot to move along the user's body and reach any predetermined location. It also includes rotational switches to enable complex routing options when diverging tracks are presented. We report the design and implementation of Calico with a series of technical evaluations for system performance. We then present a few application scenarios, and user studies to understand the potential of Calico as a dance trainer and also explore the qualitative perception of our scenarios to inform future research in this space.

We present TangibleGrid, a novel device that allows blind users to understand and design the layout of a web page with real-time tangible feedback. We conducted semi-structured interviews and a series of co-design sessions with blind users to elicit insights that guided the design of TangibleGrid. Our final prototype contains shape-changing brackets representing the web elements and a baseboard representing the web page canvas. Blind users can design a web page layout through creating and editing web elements by snapping or adjusting tangible brackets on top of the baseboard. The baseboard senses the brackets' type, size, and location, verbalizes the information, and renders the web page on the client browser. Through a formative user study, we found that blind users could understand a web page layout through TangibleGrid. They were also able to design a new web layout from scratch without the help of sighted people.

For centuries, human civilizations devised metal forming techniques to make tools and items; yet, customized metal forming remains costly and intricate. Laser-forming origami} (lasergami) is a metal forming process where a laser beam cuts and folds a planar metal sheet to form a three-dimensional (3D) shape. Designing foldable structures formable by lasers, however, has long been a trial-and-error practice that requires significant mental effort and hinders the possibility of creating practical structures. This work demonstrates for the first time that lasergami can form a freeform set of metallic structures previously believed to have been impossible to be laser-formed. This technological breakthrough is enabled by new computational origami methods that imitate flower blooming and optimize laser folding instructions. Combined with new ideas that address laser line of sight and minimize fabrication energy, we report a low-cost manufacturing framework that can be readily adopted by hobbyists and professionals alike.

In recent years, everyday activities such as work and socialization have steadily shifted to more remote and virtual settings. With the COVID-19 pandemic, the switch from physical to virtual has been accelerated, which has substantially affected various aspects of our lives, including business, education, commerce, healthcare, and personal life. This rapid and large-scale switch from in-person to remote interactions has revealed that our current technologies lack functionality and are limited in their ability to recreate interpersonal interactions. To help address these limitations in the future, we introduce "Telelife," a vision for the near future that depicts the potential means to improve remote living better aligned with how we interact, live and work in the physical world. Telelife encompasses novel synergies of technologies and concepts such as digital twins, virtual prototyping, and attention and context-aware user interfaces with innovative hardware that can support ultrarealistic graphics, user state detection, and more. These ideas will guide the transformation of our daily lives and routines soon, targeting the year 2035. In addition, we identify opportunities across high-impact applications in domains related to this vision of Telelife. Along with a recent survey of relevant fields such as human-computer interaction, pervasive computing, and virtual reality, the directions outlined in this paper will guide future research on remote living.

We present the result of a pilot study measuring child engagement with the Lets Make A Story system, a novel mixed reality, MR, collaborative storytelling system designed for grandparents and grandchildren. We compare our MR experience against an equivalent paper story experience. The goal of our pilot was to test the system with actual child users and assess the goodness of using metrics of time, user generated story content and facial expression analysis as metrics of child engagement. We find that multiple confounding variables make these metrics problematic including attribution of engagement time, spontaneous non-story related conversation and having the childs full forward face continuously in view during the story. We present our platform and experiences and our finding that the strongest metric was user comments in the post-experiential interview., Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures, to be presented in the CHI Workshop on Evaluating User Experiences in Mixed Reality, see "https://sputze.github.io/evaluating-mr/"