THE SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL DESIGN 

GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY 

Under the provisions of the regulations for the degree

MASTER OF INDUSTRIAL DESIGN 

on Tuesday, April 12, 2022

7:00 AM – 9:00 AM

Via ​​https://gatech.zoom.us/j/91879899785?pwd=OVR4OFNFMUxRUTRtMW85TUtpcWZMQT09​​

Meeting ID: 918 7989 9785

Passcode: 847234

will be held the 

THESIS DEFENSE

for 

Akash Talyan

Functional Materials: Investigating ways to make rigid prototyping materials flexible and sensible leveraging with computing technologies

Advisor: 

Dr. Hyun Joo, Assistant Professor, Schools of Industrial Design and Interactive Computing

Committee: 

Dr. Wei Wang, Adjunct Professor, School of Industrial Design, Georgia Tech & Professor, School of Design, Hunan University, China

Dr. Clement Zheng, Assistant Professor, School of Industrial Design, National University of Singapore

Faculty and students are invited to attend this presentation.

Abstract: 

This thesis presents a fabrication tool-kit developed through a material-driven inquiry to make the rigid prototyping material flexible and augment their sensing capability by combining them with the conductive substrate material. In this study, we present how different Kirigami (a Japanese term to describe cutting, folding and bending flat sheets of paper into three-dimensional forms) patterns when applied to rigid prototyping materials like chipboard, wood and acrylic can create flexible free form surfaces. Additionally, it shows how adding the conductive substrate like carbon and nickel can add sensing behavior providing affordances for various tangible interactions. 

In this thesis, we discuss different design parameters that can be taken into consideration while using the proposed tools and techniques. Various emerging creative possibilities were explored using the tools and techniques with a group of experienced designers through a co-design workshop. From our user study, we discovered that the tool-kit supports implementing electronics at the craft level seamlessly, and this empowers designers in exploring tangible interaction design.