Abstract
This paper presents the concept and development of a real-time hybrid tool to support the designers in experience prototyping of an underdeveloped smart material composite. In a EU project, Light- Touch-Matters, designers have been asked to explore the potential of composites of OLED technology and Piezoelectric polymer, that are assumed to revolutionize the ways we interact with our surrounding products. However, these technologies are not yet at the stage for designers to be investigated directly and/or implemented across different projects. To realize the potential of the material development, it is essential for designers to understand how these developing composites and their attributes might be experienced. Elaborating the gap in capturing and prototyping the performative and dynamic qualities of these composites across five design cases, we propose a material-driven approach complemented by generative Chroma keying tools to fill in this gap. Testing an initial post-processed Chroma keying technique with a group of designers, we further developed a real-time hybrid simulator, which we present in the last section of this paper.
Keywords
Experience prototyping; smart materials; experiential qualities; Chroma Key; video editing; design tools
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/eksig2017.103
Citation
Barati, B., Karana, E.,and Foole, M.(2017) Experience Prototyping Smart Material Composites, in Elvin Karana, Elisa Giaccardi, Nithikul Nimkulrat, Kristina Niedderer, Serena Camere (eds.), Alive. Active. Adaptive. International Conference on Experiential Knowledge and Emerging Materials, 19-20 June 2017, Delft and Rotterdam, The Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.21606/eksig2017.103
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Experience Prototyping Smart Material Composites
This paper presents the concept and development of a real-time hybrid tool to support the designers in experience prototyping of an underdeveloped smart material composite. In a EU project, Light- Touch-Matters, designers have been asked to explore the potential of composites of OLED technology and Piezoelectric polymer, that are assumed to revolutionize the ways we interact with our surrounding products. However, these technologies are not yet at the stage for designers to be investigated directly and/or implemented across different projects. To realize the potential of the material development, it is essential for designers to understand how these developing composites and their attributes might be experienced. Elaborating the gap in capturing and prototyping the performative and dynamic qualities of these composites across five design cases, we propose a material-driven approach complemented by generative Chroma keying tools to fill in this gap. Testing an initial post-processed Chroma keying technique with a group of designers, we further developed a real-time hybrid simulator, which we present in the last section of this paper.