Social Butterfly

Social Butterfly is a cosmetic computing wearable designed to foster creativity and activity-based social interactions between children. Our articulated plywood wings were outfitted with (1) a fluttering motion and (2) panels featuring personalized drawings. The motor-actuated fluttering motion would attract the attention of nearby playmates, and each laser-etched acrylic panel could be illuminated by capacitative touch, highlighting an aspect of the wearer’s personality to break the ice and start a conversation.

This project was a collaborative effort with my teammates Vivian Liu, Varna Vasudevan, and Yuki Zhan, as a project for NWMEDIA C203: Critical Making with Prof. Eric Paulos in Spring 2018. For this project, I worked on prototyping the laser-cut plywood wings, and was responsible for designing the capacitative touch circuit and panels. This project would not have been possible without the help of the Citris Invention Lab managers and supervisors: Chris Meyers, KJ Wu, and Mitchell Karchomsky.

Click here to view our video about Social Butterfly.

This project is published in Made in Berkeley, 2018.