Fabrication of Nāmya: A Bend and Touch-Sensitive Flexible Smartphone-Sized Prototype

Abstract

In human-computer interaction research, prototypes allow for communicating design ideas and conducting early user studies to understand user experience without developing the actual product. For investigating deformation-based interaction, functional prototyping becomes challenging due to the unavailability of commercial platforms and the marginal availability of flexible electronic components. During functional prototyping, incurred time and cost are essential factors that further depend on the ease of stiffness customization, reproduction, and upgrade. To offer these advantages, this work presents the fabrication workflow of Nāmya, a smartphone-sized flexible prototype that can detect bend gestures and touch-based inputs using off-the-shelf sensors and flexible materials. This do-it-yourself (DIY) approach to fabricating deformable prototypes focuses on addressing the challenges of selecting flexible material, type of sensor, and sensor positions. We also demonstrate that the proposed use of a flexible three-dimensional- (3D-) printed internal structure with sensor pockets and the one-part silicone cast allows the development of robust deformable prototypes. This fabrication process offers the opportunity to easily customize device stiffness, reproduce prototypes with similar physical properties, and upgrade existing prototypes.