Shapeclip: Towards Rapid Prototyping With Shape-Changing Displays For Designers

This paper presents ShapeClip: a modular tool capable of transforming any computer screen into a z-actuating shape-changing display. This enables designers to produce dynamic physical forms by 'clipping' actuators onto screens. ShapeClip displays are portable, scalable, fault-tolerant, and support runtime re-arrangement. Users are not required to have knowledge of electronics or programming, and can develop motion designs with presentation software, image editors, or web-technologies. To evaluate ShapeClip we carried out a full-day workshop with expert designers. Participants were asked to generate shape-changing designs and then construct them using ShapeClip. ShapeClip enabled participants to rapidly and successfully transform their ideas into functional systems.