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Watch Teaching Assistant Professor Annie Margaret talk about social media's role in the self esteem of teenagers in this webinar by Forward Together, an organization that develops resources for parent-to-youth and youth-to-youth communication and relationship building.

Margaret investigates the efficacy of specific psychotechnologies and contemplative practices as tools to counteract the negative impact of social media on our mental health and well-being. She is especially interested in social media’s effect on young women. Research suggests that this demographic has various negative mental health outcomes related to life satisfaction, happiness and anxiety. In a, researchers stated that the surge in social media use may be at least in part to blame for the rise in suicide rates in adolescent females, which rose 151 percent from 2009 to 2019, in stark contrast to fairly consistent rates previously (1999-2009). 
 
To address some of the underlying issues behind these disturbing trends, Margaret created a Digital Wellness Summer Program for middle-school girls that provide strategies adolescents can use to minimize the negative psychological impacts of social media.  

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LIvBSzFWs4]

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ATLAS Institute's Unstable Design Lab, directed by Laura Devendorf, will host its third experimental weaving residency this spring to develop techniques and open-source resources that support collaboration and innovation across the fiber arts and engineering communities. New this year, the lab will actively work to grow community at the intersection of craft and technology through inviting interested parties to . 

First and second residency
The Unstable Design lab received more than 200 applications in 2019 for its first experimental weaving residency, ultimately selecting Sandra Wirtanen. Due to the pandemic, the residency did not occur in 2020 or 2021. The next residency began in January 2022 with selected weaver  producing instructional materials related to woven structure and its potential applications to engineering research. Due to unforseen circumstances, Sandry's residency paused in the winter and will resume this fall.

The large number of applicants for the residency reflects a growing interest in the relationship between textiles and emerging technologies, says Devendorf, who co-founded the initiative with Steven Frost, faculty director of the B2 Center for Media, Arts & Performance. 

This residency is supported by a grant from the Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design, a nonprofit organization based in Asheville, NC, dedicated to advancing the understanding of craft by encouraging and supporting research, critical dialogue and professional development. 

Publications

Laura Devendorf, Sasha De Koninck, and Etta Sandry. 2022. An Introduction to Weave Structure for HCI: A How-to and Reflection on Modes of Exchange. In Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’22), Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. 629-642.  (June 13-17, 2022—Virtual Event, Australia) [Best Pictorial Honorable Mention Award].
 

Laura Devendorf, Katya Arquilla, Sandra Wirtanen, Allison Anderson, and Steven Frost. 2020. Craftspeople as Technical Collaborators: Lessons Learned through an Experimental Weaving Residency. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–13. DOI: (Honolulu, Hawaii (virtual)–April 25-30, 2020) [Honorable Mention Award].

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THING Lab

“EmotiTactor: Exploring How Designers Approach Emotional Robotic Touch,” authored by Ran Zhou, Harpreet Sareen, Yufei Zhang and Assistant Professor Daniel Leithinger, director of the THING Lab, won a Best Pictorial Honorable Mention award at the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS '22). Zhou, an ATLAS PhD student who was also the for DIS'22, presented the research during the Multisensory Design session.

Prior psychology findings show humans can communicate distinct emotions solely through touch, and in this work, THING Lab researchers hypothesize that similar effects might also be applicable to robotic touch. Their findings uncover that the "otherness" of robotic touch broadens the design possibilities of emotional communication beyond mimicking interpersonal touch. Bringing designers into the exploration of emotional robotic touch, the researchers discuss their design decisions and reflect on their insights. To enable designers to easily generate and modify various types of affective touch for conveying emotions (e.g., anger, happiness, etc.), the researchers also developed a platform consisting of a robotic tactor interface and a software design tool. When conducting an elicitation study with 11 interaction designers, they discovered common patterns in their generated tactile sensations for each emotion.The researchers also illustrated the strategies, metaphors, and reactions that the designers deployed in the design process.

Publication

Ran Zhou, Harpreet Sareen, Yufei Zhang, and Daniel Leithinger. 2022. EmotiTactor: Exploring How Designers Approach Emotional Robotic Touch. In Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1330–1344. https://doi.org/10.1145/3532106.3533487 .pdf  (June 13-17, 2022—Virtual Event, Australia) [Best Pictorial Honorable Mention].
 

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Living Matter Lab/Unstable Design Lab

Exploring biofoam as a Material for Tangible Interaction, authored by Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez, Netta Ofer, Shanel Wu,Mary Etta West, Mirela Alistar and Laura Devendorf  introduced the DIS audience to biofoam, a water soluble and biodegradable material that can be made conductive.

During the DIS‘22 Multisensory Design session, lead author, Lazaro, an ATLAS PhD student, presented the team's biofoam research and demonstrated the unique opportunities the material brings to HCI communities.  Vasquez described the material in detail, including the process of making biofoam from scratch and fabricating the material into forms with handcraft techniques. She also presented two HCI-specific applications of biofoam and demonstrated the different life cycles of the material, all of which can be considered in the design process; biofoam can be cooked, molded, layered, extruded, dissolved and recooked.

Publication

Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez, Netta Ofer,Shanel Wu, Mary Etta West, Mirela Alistar and Laura Devendorf. 2022. Exploring Biofoam as a Material for Tangible Interaction. In Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’22), Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1525-1529. https://doi.org/10.1145/3532106.3533494 (June 13-17, 2022—Virtual Event, Australia). 

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Unstable Design Lab

As HCI continues to integrate craft techniques into its repertoire, tensions have emerged between what is new and known—knowledge that resides in communities and histories rather than individuals—and how to transfer between the written word and material know-how. The researchers explored those tensions through the process of writing and instructing. The project's goal is two fold: first, to help HCI understand the potential that a deep understanding of weave structures can hold for advancing the HCI field, and second, to explore how a pictorial might support formats that have long been used for communicating craft knowledge.

Publication

Laura Devendorf, Sasha De Koninck, and Etta Sandry. 2022. An Introduction to Weave Structure for HCI: A How-to and Reflection on Modes of Exchange. In Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’22), Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. 629-642. https://doi.org/10.1145/3532106.3534567 (June 13-17, 2022—Virtual Event, Australia) [Best Pictorial Honorable Mention Award].
 

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Unstable Design Lab/Superhuman Computing Lab/BEEM Lab

“Knitting Access: Exploring Stateful Textiles with People with Disabilities,” authored by Annika Muehlbradt (PhD Comp. Sci’22) and researchers Shaun Kane, director of the Superhuman Computing Lab, Laura Devendorf, director of the Unstable Design Lab, and Gregory Whiting, director of the BEEM Lab, won a DIS’22 Honorable Mention award. Muehlbradt, an alumna of the Unstable Design and Superhuman Computing labs, presented the research during the Interaction Techniques track. 

“Knitting Access” addresses how non-digital textile interfaces can fit meaningfully into the lives of people with disabilities and examines the qualities of textile interfaces that are important to them. It also explores new forms of self-tracking data that may appeal to people with disabilities, such as pressing in knitted “bubbles,” to count a specific activity or mood. For instance, some of the research subjects used the knitted bubbles to count work breaks, track hydration, or to note their emotions, like anxiety.

Publication

Annika Muehlbradt, Gregory Whiting, Shaun Kane and  Laura Devendorf. 2022. Knitting Access: Exploring Stateful Textiles with People with Disabilities. In Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1058-1070. https://doi.org/10.1145/3532106.3533551 pdf (June 13-17, 2022, Virtual Event, Australia) [Best Paper Honorable Mention Award].

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Researchers from ATLAS Institute’s ACME Lab presented one pictorial and two graduate student symposium papers at the 14th ACM Creativity & Cognition (C&C), which took place June 20-23 in Venice, Italy. The theme of this year's conference was "Creativity, Craft and Design."

Graduate Student Symposium Paper

ACME Lab

 authored by Peter Gyory, (ATLAS PhD student)

Alternative Controllers (Alt Controls) enable game designers to creatively explore how humans interact with games and challenge the status-quo of game interfaces. Alt Controls, however, require technical skills and fabrication infrastructure that often make them inaccessible to the average designer. Tangible User Interface researchers stand to benefit from the unique approach that Alt Controls promote. Gyory's research aims to bridge the gap between game developers and Alt Controls through the use of everyday materials and crafting techniques. In this paper,  Gyory discusses a framework for physical computing that uses computer vision (Beholder) and an example introductory platform for Alt Controller design (TinyCade). Further research will refine this framework and incorporate the perspective of other game designers.

Publication

Peter Gyory. 2022. Creating Platforms to Support Craft and Creativity in Game Controller Design. In Creativity and Cognition (C&C '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 708–710.  (June 20-23, 2022—Venice, Italy).

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Researchers from ATLAS Institute’s ACME Lab presented one pictorial and two graduate student symposium papers at the 14th ACM Creativity & Cognition (C&C), which took place June 20-23 in Venice, Italy. The theme of this year's conference was "Creativity, Craft and Design."

Graduate Student Symposium Paper

ACME Lab

, authored by Sandra Bae, (ATLAS PhD student).

Data physicalization enables people to represent and interact with data physically rather than digitally. Physical representations afford visual analysis in comparable ways to traditional, desktop-based visualization by introducing new capabilities, such as facilitating tactile manipulation, accessible interactions, and immersion, that are beyond traditional 2D visualizations. However, physicalization has historically been a niche aspect of visualization research due to its unique challenges. In this paper, the author discusses the current challenges of data physicalization and addresses three areas where data physicalization can aid other research thrusts: broadening participation, supporting analytics and promoting creative expression. The paper exemplifies each approach through the lens of the author’s work. 

Publication

S. Sandra Bae. 2022. Towards a Deeper Understanding of Data and Materiality. In Creativity and Cognition (C&C '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 674–678. https://doi.org/10.1145/3527927.3533734 (June 20-23, 2022—Venice, Italy).

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Researchers from ATLAS Institute’s ACME Lab presented one pictorial and two graduate student symposium papers at the 14th ACM Creativity & Cognition (C&C), which took place June 20-23 in Venice, Italy. The theme of this year's conference was "Creativity, Craft and Design."

Pictorial

ACME Lab

 authored by Peter Gyory, (ATLAS PhD student); Perry Owens, (Creative Industries master’s student); Matthew Bethancourt, (teaching associate professor and director of the Whaaat?! Lab;) Amy Banic, (visiting associate professor, ATLAS/computer science;)  Clement Zheng, (ATLAS post-doctoral research associate, PhD, Technology, Media & Society ‘20) and Ellen Yi-Luen Do, (faculty, ATLAS/computer science).

Tinycade is a platform designed to help game designers build their own mini arcade games by hand. With this platform, one can craft functioning game controllers out of everyday materials such as cardboard and toothpicks.  In this pictorial, the authors discuss the functionality of Tinycade and showcase three games that demonstrate the variety of controls possible with this platform.

Publication

Peter Gyory, Perry Y Owens, Matthew Bethancourt, Amy Banic, Clement Zheng, Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2022. “Build Your Own Arcade Machine with Tinycade,” In 14th ACM conference on , (June 20-23, 2022—Venice, Italy).

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