Ephemeral Fabrication: Exploring a Ubiquitous Fabrication Scenario of Low-Effort, In-Situ Creation of Short-Lived Physical Artifacts

Abstract

Personal fabrication empowers users to create objects increasingly easier and faster. This continuous decrease in effort evokes a speculative scenario of Ephemeral Fabrication (EF), enabled and amplified by emerging paradigms of mobile, wearable, or even bodyintegrated fabrication. EF yields fast, temporary, in-situ solutions for everyday problems (e.g., creating a protective skin, affixing a phone). Users solely create those, since the required effort is negligible. We present and critically reflect on the EF scenario, by exploring current trends in research and building a body-worn fabrication device. EF is a plausible extrapolation of current developments, entailing both positive (e.g., accessibility) and negative implications (e.g., unsustainability). Using speculative design methodology to question the trajectory of personal fabrication, we argue that to avert the aftermath of such futures, topics like sustainability can not remain an afterthought, but rather be situated in interactions themselves: through embedded constraints, conscious material choice, and constructive embedding of ephemerality. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Human computer interaction (HCI).

pARam: Leveraging Parametric Design in Extended Reality to Support the Personalization of Artifacts for Personal Fabrication

“…In this context of personal fabrication, Ashbrook et al defined in-situ design as a procedure where users design new artifacts "with in its existing context" [6]. It is contrasted with insitu fabrication, where the manufacturing of an object happens in conjunction with pre-existing ones [6,18,104]. pARam focuses on in-situ design, given that industrial fabrication capabilities may be easier to scale to unique, one-off designs in the context of masspersonalization [89].…”

“…The notion of "in-situ" actions can likewise be applied to the act of fabrication or manufacturing, where interacting objects found in a specific context, are included in the fabrication process. This includes approaches enabling mobile fabrication [18,97], portable fabrication [91,93], or wearable fabrication [104], each of them enabling in-situ fabrication activities. RoMA by Peng et al [92] is an example where design and fabrication happen in parallel, through a collaboration between a human user and a robotic arm, enabling a turn-taking process [92].…”

DungeonMaker: Embedding Tangible Creation and Destruction in Hybrid Board Games through Personal Fabrication Technology

“…Notions of unmaking [83,115], ephemerality [87], and destruction [60] in the context of digital fabrication have also been explored as a design material and interaction paradigm. Role assignments between humans and fabrication devices have also been questioned in the works of Devendorf et al [26][27][28].…”

“…In continuation of the two previous points, this gradient between physical "alteration", "damage", and "destruction" also has to be carefully considered with respect to material use and sustainability. This consideration can be woven into aspects like material choice [71,87,109], but we argue-grounded in our own design processthat it can not be omitted from game design itself, considering it upfront and not as an "afterthought" [87]. A middle ground has to be found, where actual "destruction" is rare, while retaining risk yet demonstrating it through visible, tangible damage.…”

ShapeFindAR: Exploring In-Situ Spatial Search for Physical Artifact Retrieval using Mixed Reality

“…Alternatively, tangible manipulation may be employed for input and provide appropriate feedback [48,57] not found in most industrial CAD tools. Such ways to express and define geometry may, depending on the user, reduce the effort to design geometry [51]. In contrast to the interfaces that focus on the design and generation of artifacts, retrieval interfaces focus on the search for finished designs or parts [20].…”