Generic method for crafting deformable interfaces to physically augment smartphones
Chihiro Watanabe, Álvaro Cassinelli, Yoshihiro Watanabe, Masatoshi Ishikawa · 2014
Though we live in the era of the touchscreen (tablet PCs and smart phones providing a rigid and flat interface) people and the industry are getting excited about the world of tangible 3D interfaces. This may be explained for two reasons: first, the emergence of cheap vision-based gestural interfaces conquering the space above and below the screen (but without haptic feedback), and second - and perhaps more important for the present discussion - the explosion of the 3D printing industry and the possibility for the end user to not only customise the layout of icons on a screen, but also of designing their own physical, deformable interface from scratch. Mass-produced smartphones could then be seen as bare-bone electronics devices whose shape can be physically augmented, personalised and crafted.