ProtoBricks: A Research Toolkit for Tangible Prototyping & Data Physicalization

Abstract

Building tangible interfaces or data physicalizations is a resource-intensive endeavour. There is a need for rapid means to prototype tangibles in order to facilitate research and design. To this end, we designed ProtoBricks: a research toolkit that uses capacitive bricks to facilitate rapid prototyping for tangible interfaces. Utilizing toy bricks that do not contain electronics, ProtoBricks can record brick position and color. Specialized knowledge is not required to build our system as it uses widely available components and 3D printing. We contribute the full software and hardware specifcation of the toolkit. We evaluate the utility of the toolkit by reporting on past use cases and prototyping workshops. We show that the toolkit facilitates creativity and efectively supports prototyping. ProtoBricks lowers the entry threshold for experimenting with tangible interfaces and enables researchers and designers to focus on the interaction with their prototype, delegating implementation to the toolkit.