DisplayFab: The State of the Art and a Roadmap in the Personal Fabrication of Free-Form Displays Using Active Materials and Additive Manufacturing

Over recent years, there has been significant research within HCI towards free-form physical interactive devices. However, such devices are not straightforward to design, produce and deploy on demand. Traditional development revolves around iterative prototyping through component-based assembly, limiting device structure and implementation. Material-centric personal display fabrication (DisplayFab) opens the possibility of decentralised, configurable production by low-skill makers. Currently, DisplayFab is severely limited by its embryonic stage of development, the complexity of involved processes and materials, and the challenges around designing interactive structures. We present a development framework to provide a path for future research. DisplayFab has been developed by identifying 4 key breakpoints in the existing “Personal Fabrication” framework: Material and Deposition, Conception and Software, Feedback and Interactivity and Responsible Innovation. We use these breakpoints to form a targeted literature review of relevant work. Doing this we identify 30 challenges that act as roadmap for future research in DisplayFab.