eldy lazaro – Unstable Design Lab

Example gelatin-based fibers produced using our biofiber spinning machine.

Smart textiles combine electronics with traditional textile forms, showing great promise in creating soft and flexible interactive systems for human-computer interaction and robotics. However, they also present significant sustainability challenges as they merge two substantial waste streams: textiles and electronics.

We wrote a paper in the hopes of contributing to sustainability efforts by focusing on the integration of biobased materials that are biodegradable, compostable, and recyclable in the design of smart textiles. We introduced a Desktop Biofibers Spinning Machine to enable smart textile innovators to explore biobased fibers (i.e., biofibers) and envision applications in sustainable smart textiles.

A diagram of the parts used to create the machine.

The paper cited below describes the machine’s design, a usage walkthrough, considerations for fiber spinning, and an exploration of various formulations to make gelatin biofibers. We provide several examples of biofibers integrated into smart textile applications. Finally, we discuss lessons learned from working with biofibers and the unique opportunities our machine brings to the fiber design space in Human Computer Interaction and beyond.

Team: Eldy Lazaro, Michael Rivera, Mirela Alistar, Laura Devendorf, Miles Lewis, Lily Gabriel. A collaboration between the Unstable Design Lab, Living Matter Lab, and Utility Research Lab.

Citation: Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez, Mirela Alistar, Laura Devendorf, and Michael L. Rivera. 2024. Desktop Biofibers Spinning: An Open-Source Machine for Exploring Biobased Fibers and Their Application Towards Sustainable Smart Textile Design. In Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 856, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642387

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfL6a9ZOTR4

Instructions to Make your Own: https://github.com/utilityresearchlab/desktop-biofibers-spinning

an array of forms created with biofoam, a foam-like form created from gelatin

Each new material developed opens a broader pallet of aesthetic and functional possibilities for designers. This paper demonstrates biofoam, a material that is water-soluble, biodegradable, and can be made conductive. We describe the material in detail: the process of making the material from scratch, the material’s fabrication into forms with hand-craft techniques, and present two HCI specific applications of the biofoam. The biofoam can be cooked, molded, layered, extruded, dissolved or recooked opening up possibilities to consider the entire life cycle of the material in the design process. We contribute design considerations to allow designers to “tune” the biofoam to the desired quality, as well as a characterization of many aspects of the biofoam such as compression, spring back time, water permeability, and electrical conductivity. Finally, we discuss the unique opportunities this material and its life cycle bring to the design and HCI communities.

Citation:
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).

Presentation: