News/Research

Conference Grants: Katherine Song at CHI 23

26 May, 2023

Conference Grants: Katherine Song at CHI 23

We are pleased to support our students sharing their work at the premiere conferences in their field. Katherine Song presented their work "Lotio: Lotion-Mediated Interaction with an Electronic Skin-Worn Display" and "Vim: Customizable, Decomposable Electrical Energy Storage." at The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. From Katherine:

The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems is one of the largest annual gatherings of Human-Computer Interaction researchers from around the world. This year, 2023, the conference was held in Hamburg, Germany from April 23 to 28. I presented 2 papers, the first of which was "Lotio: Lotion-Mediated Interaction with an Electronic Skin-Worn Display." Lotio is a skin-worn technology that is activated by the application of lotion. The talk detailed the fabrication, evaluation, and applications of Lotio, in addition to our vision for a landscape of "Lotion Interfaces" more broadly. The second talk I gave was "Vim: Customizable, Decomposable Electrical Energy Storage." Vims are electrical energy storage components that can replace batteries in small, temporary electronic applications. They are made with DIY-friendly materials and methods.

I had many follow-up conversations with other researchers after my talks, and those left me energized with new ideas for future research projects and collaborations. I spent most of my time at CHI attending other paper presentations across various domains, including wearables, personal fabrication, design theory, and haptics. In between and after paper sessions, it was wonderful to reconnect with people I haven't seen since last year's CHI, and every day was filled with stimulating presentations, meet-ups, and activities.