Electrochromic Skin

Electrochromic displays have several qualities that make them an attractive material for wearable design; they are run at a low power, require power only at transition, demonstrate slow and natural chromic change, and are entirely passive. We envision that their slow and natural chromic properties can be exploited further in slow wearable displays. To that end, this project investigates strategies for designing with the slowness of electrochromic displays, and interconnect design techniques to achieve granular control over the display behaviors.

With understanding how slowness can be be controlled and reproduced in EC displays, we identified four temporal elements that naturally blends into environments and particularly wearables. In light of the slow design movement, these informed a range of slow elements that emphasize their potential relationships with user perception–or perceptual agency. These relationships include decoupling data stimulus with recognition through gradual and continuous representation, interpretive recognition through unspecificity, un-forcing information through disappearance and trails of data.

S. Junnarkar, X. Yang, M. Drawdy, I. Gupta, WH Yeo, N. Posner, and S. Leigh. Exploiting the Slowness of Electrochromic Displays, ISWC 2021