Design for Physical Interaction II
Building and testing connected devices through physical interaction, prototyping and computation.
A hands-on graduate studio exploring how connected devices mediate experiences between people, their surroundings and emerging technologies. Building on DESIGN 6397, students combine software, embedded hardware, sensing and actuation to develop and test physical interfaces, moving from early mock-ups to functioning prototypes.
Course outline
A public outline based on the Spring 2026 syllabus.
Goals
- Integrate computation, sensing, actuation and communication into physical interfaces.
- Develop skills in coding, electronics, CAD and digital fabrication.
- Evaluate and refine interaction designs through critique and user feedback.
- Use prototypes to investigate assumptions about technology and society and communicate complex ideas.
- Document research, process and outcomes for a project portfolio.
Projects & workshop
Project 1: Large Language Objects
Develop physical interfaces for large language models, exploring creative and artistic applications of physical AI through form, sensing and interaction. Hands-on experimentation is paired with critical attention to bias, interpretability, computational cost, privacy and generalization.
Project 2: Physical Telepresence (Haptics)
Design and fabricate haptic interfaces that use the body's sensing abilities to explore physical communication. Mapping inputs to actuators and bodily outputs offers new ways to connect people and places at a distance.
Interspecies Reciprocities — Speculative Design Jam
Explore reciprocal relationships between humans and other species. Research into biological sensing and environmental monitoring informs rapid physical prototypes, 3D modeling, printing and hybrid fabrication, imagining how humans might interpret and respond to non-human signals.
Project documentation: Research, prototype iterations, working interactive systems and visual process documentation that communicate the design and its development.
Spring 2026
Eight student projects selected by Chris Woebken · Design for Physical Interaction II
FELIS
Student project by Lucius Hu, Sophia Sun · Spring 2026
Project 1: Large Language Objects
Project overview
A wearable social agent that explores emotional expression through feline body language. The prototype connects conversation analysis to moving ears and an articulated tail, making an interpretation of the exchange visible through gesture. It asks whether an indirect, animal-inspired signal could make difficult feelings easier to communicate.
Breathe
Student project by Stevie Phelabaum, Sarah Rupani, Jacob Gasper · Spring 2026
Project 2: Physical Telepresence · Haptic interface
Student project description
Breathe is an immersive haptic installation that invites participants to slow down and synchronize with a live, breathing structure. Visitors walk into a corridor of two suspended strata of translucent paper, fully deployed around them. Driven by stepper motors, the individual sheets shift and flutter, grazing and brushing against your skin as they move. As the paper gently rises, you inhale; as it settles, you exhale. The delicate rustle and soft brush of the paper create a quiet moment where your breath finds a new rhythm, one shared with the structure around you. In a world of constant overstimulation Breathe offers a rare pause, a chance to let something outside yourself lead you back to the present.
In-fauna
Student project by Gloria Zhu, Qi Han, Zixi Zhang · Spring 2026
Project 2: Physical Telepresence · Haptic interface
Student project description
In-fauna is a shell-shaped haptic device that invites users to identify an unknown animal through touch alone. Inspired by the parable of the blind men and the elephant, the device houses a motor-driven turntable inside a conch form — users reach into the opening and feel one of several textured surfaces, each representing the skin of different creatures. Vibration motors embedded pulses a heartbeat through the user's touch.
The two sensory channels of surface texture and biological rhythm at the fingertip invites users to reveal the animal's identity with fragments.
Interspecies Prototypes: Feline Movement
Student project by Lucius Hu · Spring 2026
Workshop: Interspecies Interdependence
Project overview
Two physical studies explore how feline movement might be experienced through the human body. Angled wooden shoe attachments shift posture and balance; a hand-mounted linkage extends and retracts a set of claws. Sketching, fabrication and movement tests connect observations of anatomy with the experience of wearing a prototype.
Dance Dance Respiration
Student project by Demi Hu, Jacob Gasper, Reto Chen, Sarah Rupani, Stevie Phelabaum · Spring 2026
Workshop: Interspecies Interdependence
Project overview
A speculative wearable and performance study inspired by aquatic respiration. A mask and air tubes connect breathing to movements of the arms and body. Through role-play and repeated physical trials, the group explores the effort of inhabiting a body whose respiration depends on movement.
Squirrel Ranger
Student project by Sophia, Rachel, Cici · Spring 2026
Workshop: Interspecies Interdependence
Project overview
An interspecies role-play exploring scent, memory and the redistribution of seeds. A wearable mask, an acorn-shaped probe and a tabletop landscape model stage an imagined interface for sensing and mapping a squirrel’s world. The team tests the idea through a simulated interaction, using the prototype to ask how forgetting might contribute to a forest’s future.
Pulse of Now
Student project by Charlotte, Kira, Simone · Spring 2026
Project 2: Physical Telepresence · Haptic interface
Student project description
Pulse of Now is a quiet invitation to feel what is always there but rarely noticed.
Each stone carries a rhythm.
A pulse from your own body.
A pulse from someone you love.
A pulse from the Earth itself—slow, ancient, continuous.
Wherever the Weather
Student project by Demi Hu, Cici Xu, Reto Chen · Spring 2026
Project 2: Physical Telepresence · Haptic interface
Student project description
Wherever the Weather is a handheld haptic weather device that brings the weather of any city the user chooses. The device simulates an environment through the whimsical form factor of an umbrella, manipulating how an umbrella feels when held in different weather conditions rather than altering the environment itself.
Class documentation
