RIME – Rich Interactive Materials for Everyday Objects in the Home

Principal Investigators

Prof. Dr. Susanne Boll, University of Oldenburg (Homepage)
Prof. Dr. Jan Borchers, RWTH Aachen University (Homepage)
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Steimle, Saarland University (Homepage)

The key approach of RIME to achieve is to unlock the interactive potential for rich interaction with the materials in our smart environments. We will be designing, prototyping, and evaluating scalable sensor and actuator technology and touch interaction paradigms for seamless integration into everyday materials and objects, to enable natural and scalable hands-on interactions with our future smart homes. As a result, the physical artefacts in our homes, such as chairs, tables, walls, and other surfaces, can be equipped with an interactive digital “skin”, or contain interactive sensor and actuator materials; and swiping along a table, say, to unfold it for additional guests may become a possible scenario.

Main Research Question

How do we unlock the interactive potential for rich interaction with the materials in our smart environments?

Sub-Research questions
  1. What are the characteristics of everyday touch on objects and surfaces in the home?
  2. How can we improve interactive surfaces and objects in the home to make them more discoverable and their interactions unambiguous?
  3. How do we integrate multimodal feedback mechanisms on everyday household objects and surfaces used for smart home control?
  4. What are the effective and efficient fabrication techniques for enhanced everyday household objects and surfaces used for smart home control?
  5. How do we integrate observed human characteristics and behaviors into the designs of everyday household objects and surfaces used for smart home control?

PhD Students

Michael Chamunorwa

Oldenburg University

Oliver Nowak

RWTH Aachen University

René Schäfer

RWTH Aachen University

Narjes Pourjafarian

Saarland University

Publications

Sweet Spot: Displaying Interaction Areas on Everyday Home Surfaces using AR

M. Chamunorwa, L. Müller, T. Ihmels, D. Diekmann, H. Müller, and S. Boll.
ACM ISS 2021
An exploration on visualising reachable zones on planar surfaces with potential for embedding alternative smarthome user interfaces.

Inhabiting Interconnected Spaces: How Users Shape and Appropriate Their Smart Home Ecosystems.

M.P. Woźniak, S. Vöge, R. Krüger, H. Müller, M. Koelle, S. Boll
ACM CHI 2023

A thematic analysis to reveal how users shape their smart home ecosystems (SHEs), considering social relationships at home, perceived ownership of SHTs, and expected key benefits.

Interacting with rigid and soft surfaces for smart-home control

M. Chamunorwa, M.P. Wozniak, S. Vöge, H. Müller, S. Boll.
ACM MobileHCI 2022
Documentation and evaluation of end-user behaviours plus gesture preferences in fictional smart home settings in two settings; living room and home office.




Vasi-Light: Using Everyday Decorative Items as Smarthome Interfaces.

P. Ganjeh, M. Bosomefi Chamunorwa, A. Gopal, S. Mutyala.
ACM MUM 2023
Using Everyday Decorative Items as Smarthome Interfaces.




Print-A-Sketch: A Handheld Printer for Physical Sketching of Circuits and Sensors on Everyday Surfaces

N. Pourjafarian, M. Koelle, F. Mjaku, P. Strohmeier, J. Steimle.
ACM CHI 2022
Handheld printer for printing intricate patterns using conductive and non-conductive inks, allowing the creation of circuits.

What's that shape? Investigating Eyes-Free recognition of textile icons

R. Schäfer, O. Nowak, L. Suchmann, S. Schröder, J. Borchers.
ACM CHI 2023

Evaluation of different icon designs on textile interfaces


Popup Observation Kit for Remote Usability Testing. 


J. Kaiser, T. Marianski, M. Muras, M. Chamunorwa
ACM MUM 2021
Demonstration of an easy to assemble observation kit for remote user studies. Concept aimed at improving ecological validity of observational studies.



Handheld Tools Unleashed: Mixed-Initiative Physical Sketching with a Robotic Printer

N. Pourjafarian, F. Mjaku, M. Koelle, M. Schmitz, J. Borchers, J. Steimle
ACM CHI 2023
Robot that can allow no hands sketching and printing on surfaces including rigid and soft ones using conductive inks.

Shaping Textile Sliders: An Evaluation of Form Factors and Tick Marks for Textile Sliders

O. Nowak, R. Schäfer, A. Brocker, P. Wacker, J. Borchers.
ACM CHI 2022

Evaluation of different slider designs on textile interfaces.


An Empirical Comparison of Moderated and Unmoderated Gesture Elicitation Studies on Soft Surfaces and Objects for Smart Home Control.

M., Chamunorwa, M. P., Woźniak, S., Krämer, H., Müller, and S., Boll.
ACM MobileHCI 2023

Comparison between supervised and unsupervised Gesture Elicitation Studies with a physical prop.



  1. Michael Chamunorwa, Lisa-Maria Müller, Tjado Ihmels, Dennis Diekmann, Heiko Müller, and Susanne CJ Boll. 2021. Sweet Spot: Displaying Interaction Areas on Everyday Home Surfaces using AR. In Companion Proceedings of the 2021 Conference on Interactive Surfaces and Spaces (ISS ’21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 21–24. https://doi.org/10.1145/3447932.3490524
  2. Jonah-Noël Kaiser, Thu Marianski, Marco Muras, and Michael Chamunorwa. 2022. Popup Observation Kit for Remote Usability Testing. In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (MUM ’21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 233–235. https://doi.org/10.1145/3490632.3497871
  3. Michael Chamunorwa, Mikołaj P. Wozniak, Sarah Vöge, Heiko Müller, and Susanne C.J. Boll. 2022. Interacting with Rigid and Soft Surfaces for Smart-Home Control. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 6, MHCI, Article 211 (September 2022), 22 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3546746
  4. Narjes Pourjafarian, Marion Koelle, Fjolla Mjaku, Paul Strohmeier, and Jürgen Steimle. 2022. Print-A-Sketch: A Handheld Printer for Physical Sketching of Circuits and Sensors on Everyday Surfaces. In Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 270, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3502074
  5. Oliver Nowak, René Schäfer, Anke Brocker, Philipp Wacker, and Jan Borchers. 2022. Shaping Textile Sliders: An Evaluation of Form Factors and Tick Marks for Textile Sliders. In Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 214, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3517473
  6. René Schäfer, Oliver Nowak, Lovis Bero Suchmann, Sören Schröder, and Jan Borchers. 2023. What’s That Shape? Investigating Eyes-Free Recognition of Textile Icons. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 580, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3580920
  7. Narjes Pourjafarian, Fjolla Mjaku, Marion Koelle, Martin Schmitz, Jan Borchers, and Jürgen Steimle. 2023. Handheld Tools Unleashed: Mixed-Initiative Physical Sketching with a Robotic Printer. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 734, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3580691
  8. Mikołaj P. Woźniak, Sarah Vöge, Ronja Krüger, Heiko Müller, Marion Koelle, and Susanne Boll. 2023. Inhabiting Interconnected Spaces: How Users Shape and Appropriate Their Smart Home Ecosystems. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 636, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581497

  9. Michael Chamunorwa, Mikołaj P. Woźniak, Susanna Krämer, Heiko Müller, and Susanne Boll. 2023. An Empirical Comparison of Moderated and Unmoderated Gesture Elicitation Studies on Soft Surfaces and Objects for Smart Home Control.. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 7, MHCI, Article 198 (September 2023), 24 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3604245