Documenting Material Learning in Human-Computer Interaction
Workshop at ACM DIS, National University of Singapore
In this workshop, we explore how material knowledge is taught, learned, and disseminated within HCI research. Through the activity of creating a quilt, the workshop compares how different forms of knowledge circulation, such as tutorials, oral instruction, mentorship, workshops, and community-based collaboration, relate to one another.
Researchers, educators, designers, and practitioners are invited to engage with themes including pedagogical forms of material knowledge; learning trajectories; tacit, sensory, and biological knowledge in making, care, and maintenance; access and participation in fabrication; and the design of pedagogical artifacts.
Workshop activities focus on creating quilt patches using different dissemination practices and assembling them into a collective quilt based on similarities and differences in how material knowledge is shared. Through these activities, the workshop aims to explain teaching methods, compare approaches to knowledge sharing, and support the creation of a simple toolkit for recording material processes.
Call for Participation
This full-day, in-person workshop invites researchers, educators, designers, and practitioners to examine how material knowledge is disseminated in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) through hands-on enactment and comparison of pedagogical practices.
The workshop will be of interest to those who work with and teach material and fabrication practices in HCI, including wearables, tangible and embodied interaction, soft fabrication, electronics prototyping, bio design, soma design, and other material-led and embodied approaches.
Rather than treating documentation and teaching as secondary to making, the workshop foregrounds pedagogy as a central design practice. Participants will collaboratively create a knowledge quilt that functions as both a metaphor and an analytic device for exploring how material knowledge is taught, learned, and shared.
Drawing on participants’ experiences, small groups will each work with a distinct mode of dissemination, such as formal tutorials, oral instruction, mentorship, community-based collaborative design, or open-source documentation. Groups will use these approaches to construct a quilt patch and a corresponding pedagogical artifact, then rotate to learn from one another’s artifacts.
Across the day, participants will compare how dissemination practices overlap or conflict and reflect on what is easy or difficult to communicate when learning involves embodiment, care, temporality, or living and variable materials. The workshop will generate exemplar documentation materials and a collaboratively fabricated quilt to support reflection on pedagogical practice.
To apply, submit up to a 300-word statement describing your interest and, optionally, a pedagogical or documentation practice you would like to bring. Selection prioritizes diversity of practices, contexts, and career stages over competitive evaluation.
Key Dates
- Submission deadline: Rolling basis
- Workshop date: Saturday 13 June
Submissions
Please submit your statement using this Google form.
Focus
The workshop brings together researchers, educators, and practitioners interested in fabrication-oriented HCI practices such as 3D printing, wearable computing, electronics prototyping, and other tangible, material-based approaches.
Participants will share and compare how they disseminate material knowledge, including tutorials, recipes, oral teaching, mentorship, community workshops, open-source documentation, and co-design.
Using a collaborative knowledge quilt activity, participants will externalize pedagogical practices, compare approaches, and identify prompts and exemplar formats that can inform a lightweight documentation toolkit and a community-contributed resource space. No prior sewing or materials experience is required.
Workshop Schedule
| Time | Activity | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 10:00–10:15 | Welcome and framing | Overview of goals, structure, and participant practices. |
| 10:15–11:45 | Session 1: Enacting Practices | Small groups create a quilt patch and a pedagogical artifact demonstrating a specific teaching approach. |
| 11:45–12:00 | Break | |
| 12:00–13:30 | Session 2: Learning Through Others | Participants rotate between groups, learning from others’ artifacts and reflecting on differences in guidance and support. |
| 13:30–14:30 | Lunch | |
| 14:30–15:45 | Session 3: Stitching Practices | Participants collectively assemble the quilt to surface relationships, tensions, and overlaps. |
| 15:45–16:00 | Break | |
| 16:00–17:15 | Session 4: Reflection and documentation | Group reflection on learning, documentation challenges, and insights for future toolkit ideas. |
| 17:15–17:30 | Wrap-up | Next steps, potential outputs, and closing discussion. |
Goals and Anticipated Outcomes
Goals
- Bring diverse dissemination practices into conversation across labs, community spaces, and open-source contexts.
- Make pedagogical practices visible through concrete exemplars and comparative mapping.
- Seed materials for post-workshop sharing, including toolkit prompts and resource hub contributions.
Anticipated Outcomes
- A collective knowledge quilt with photographic and annotated documentation.
- A comparative map of pedagogical and dissemination practices grounded in participant experience.
- Initial prompts and dimensions for a lightweight, non-prescriptive documentation toolkit.
- Exemplar documentation artifacts contributed in multiple formats.
- A post-workshop plan for a co-authored pictorial or reflective paper and a community-contributed resource hub.
Organizers
Karen Anne Cochrane is an Assistant Professor in the Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business at the University of Waterloo and directs the Embodied Computing Lab. Her research focuses on fabrication, wearable and embodied computing, and material-centred design, with an emphasis on supporting underrepresented communities in building and maintaining assistive technologies.
Fiona Bell is an Assistant Professor of Human-Centred Computing at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and directs the Entangled Ecologies Lab. Her work bridges HCI, material science, and biodesign to create sustainable bio-digital interfaces and regenerative materials.
Georgia Loewen is a PhD candidate at Carleton University whose research focuses on video game accessibility for players with upper limb motor disabilities and Do-it-together approaches to assistive technology customization.
Eldy Lazaro Vasquez is a Peruvian designer and researcher whose work explores biodesign, e-textiles, and sustainability. She completed her doctorate at the ATLAS Institute, University of Colorado Boulder.
Phillip Gough is a Senior Lecturer in Design at the University of Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning and a member of the Affective Interactions Lab, focusing on biomaterials in circular economies and interactive systems.
Ali Mazalek is Professor and Edward S. Rogers Sr. Research Chair in Embodied Digital Media at Toronto Metropolitan University. She directs the Synaesthetic Media Lab and researches tangible and computational media for creativity, learning, and discovery.