Foot Augmentation 101: Design your own Augmented
Experiences
Dennis Wittchen∗dennis.wittchen@htw-dresden.de
University of Applied Sciences
Dresden, Germany
Sensorimotor Interaction,
Max Planck Institute for Informatics,
Saarland Informatics Campus
Saarbrücken, Germany

Florian ‘Floyd’ Müller

florian.floyd.mueller@monash.edu
Exertion Games Lab, Department of
Human Centred Computing, Monash
University
Melbourne, Australia

Nihar Sabnis∗

nsabnis@mpi-inf.mpg.de
Sensorimotor Interaction,
Max Planck Institute for Informatics,
Saarland Informatics Campus
Saarbrücken, Germany

Paul Strohmeierpaul.strohmeier@mpi-inf.mpg.de
Sensorimotor Interaction,
Max Planck Institute for Informatics,
Saarland Informatics Campus
Saarbrücken, Germany

ABSTRACTThis studio aims to collaboratively build foot augmentations, experiment with different materials and techniques, and create new
designs for low-cost, wearable, and accessible devices that can beused by researchers, makers, designers, and artists. Considering theheightened focus on the human body with the rise of AR/VR/XR
technologies, foot augmentation has great potential. To explore thispotential, we invite researchers, designers and artists to share theirapplications, experiences, and ideas while designing foot augmentations. Participants will share knowledge, brainstorm ideas, andexplore tools and materials for rapid prototyping. Finally, they willtinker and explore, discussing their design strategies to derive common approaches and best practices. Based on the hands-on session
results, we will write a paper on design strategies for foot augmentation that will help facilitate more sustainable investigations anddesign of future foot interfaces.

CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Haptic devices; Systems andtools for interaction design.

KEYWORDS
foot interaction, foot augmentation, augmenting experiences
ACM Reference Format:
Dennis Wittchen, Nihar Sabnis, Troy Nachtigall, Florian ‘Floyd’ Müller,
Paul Strohmeier, and Don Samitha Elvitigala. 2024. Foot Augmentation∗ These authors contributed equally.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal orclassroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributedfor profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citationon the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored.
For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s).
TEI ’24, February 11–14, 2024, Cork, Ireland© 2024 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).
ACM ISBN 979-8-4007-0402-4/24/02
https://doi.org/10.1145/3623509.3634744

Troy Nachtigall

t.r.nachtigall@hva.nl
Eindhoven University of Technology
Eindhoven, Netherlands

Don Samitha Elvitigala

don.elvitigala@monash.edu
Exertion Games Lab, Department of
Human Centred Computing, Monash
University
Melbourne, Australia

101: Design your own Augmented Experiences. In Eighteenth International
Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI ’24), February 11–14, 2024, Cork, Ireland. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 4 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3623509.3634744

1

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

Feet are one of the foundational modality to mediate the interaction between humans and the world. However, the vast majority offoot augmentations act as disembodied devices for the user. Thinking of foot augmentations beyond disembodied devices opens up
opportunities to design embodied, embedded, ubiquitous and experiential interfaces. Furthermore, the wellbeing of our feet hasa significant effect on the overall quality of life [11, 17]. Yet, footaugmentation systems are merely a sidenote in the wider humancomputer-interaction discourse. We therefore propose a workshop
focusing on a topic we find both important and underrepresented
in literature.
Foot augmentations rely on foot-worn mobile interfaces withsensing and output capabilities [3]. They have been used in various
application scenarios in research, design, and as consumer products [8, 16, 20]. The concept of smart shoes as consumer products
has been widely applied in sports performance and human activity
tracking [27]. Furthermore, input and output foot interfaces havebeen used in applications such as VR and mixed reality [2, 21], rehabilitation [1, 15], context aware-computing [12], and cognitive load
tracking [5, 6, 9]. In artistic installations, wearable foot interfaces
have been used to track movements of dancers [13, 14]. These examples show a steady increase in the number of foot augmentations
found in literature covering a broad range of applications.
However, attempts to develop foot interfaces to solve a specificproblem, guidelines for designing sensing and actuating mechanisms for feet, appear to be underdeveloped. Addressing thesechallenges provides an opportunity to enable richer interactions,through our feet, with the world. In the process, we will realize new

TEI ’24, February 11–14, 2024, Cork, Ireland

designs for low-cost, wearable, accessible, and sustainable interfaces to be used in HCI. However, this needs a collaborative effort
from experts in different domains such as technology, design, artand sports. Hence, in this studio, we invite researchers, practitioners, designers, and artists to share their applications, experiences,and ideas for designing foot augmentations.
The aim is to get our feet wet, experiment with different materials
and techniques to prototype foot interfaces collaboratively. We
will share knowledge from previous work in the field, and use
tools for rapid prototyping to bring ideas to life. Participants willtinker and explore, while collaboratively sketching design strategies,
common approaches and best practices. Based on the observationsof hands-on sessions, we plan to write a paper on design strategies
for foot augmentation to facilitate more sustainable investigations
and designs around the human foot.

2

STUDIO PROPOSALFoot Augmentation 101 studio aims to provide participants an opportunity to explore, experience and design foot augmentations byusing different sensing (pressure [5], motion [23], capacitance [12])and actuation technologies (vibration [7], EMS [10], touch [2]) in
their prototypes. These augmentations can range from abstract
information provided by vibrotactile patterns [22] to realistic andembodied feedback in closed loop manner [4, 19].
We plan for an interactive in-person studio, which focuses on
creating a collaborative environment to design, explore, and discussfoot augmentations. Based on the number of participants, their interest and preferences, the participants will be split into groups with
one of the themes described below serving as an inspiration. However, participants are free to explore other questions and directions
they find interesting.
Designing for realism: We will use vibrotactile rendering coupledwith user action to create virtual textures using Haptic Servos [18],and tactile shoes [4, 25]. Participants have the opportunity to augment objects and/or the body. The prompts to participants would
revolve about this idea and participants would be free to explore
different input-output mappings, sensing-actuation integration, vibrotactile renderings to change the walking experience, etc.
Designing for abstract information: Questions like ‘How would
you design foot interfaces as information displays? What information
can and should it provide, and how should the user experience it?’,will be explored. We will provide participants with a real-time
collaboration system (advanced version of TactJam [26]) for codesigning tactile patterns.
Ideate-Prototype-Experience-Repeat: We will introduce participants to rapid prototyping approaches for creating shoe soles
like using hot-glue guns, etc. Questions like ‘How can you rapidly
prototype foot interfaces? How to utilize a procedural and data-driven
design pipeline? Can large language models assist in the process?’,
will guide this theme.
Compare and contrast: Augmentation is thought of as one thing,while in reality, there are multiple approaches. We want participants
to compare and contrast different foot interfaces, and document
their experiences of the interaction. Prototypes brought by theorganizers as well as participants will serve as samples. ‘What are
the essential elements to create a homogeneous experience? Which

Wittchen, et al.

augmentation strategies worked and which ones did not and why?’,
are the questions this theme aims to answer.
Virtual shoe customization: Participants will be provided with
virtual shoe models to customize their own shoes. Questions like,‘How can I customize shoes to suit different functions, ergonomics andapplications? How can we further improve virtual footwear design?’
would be addressed.

2.1

Learning Goals

There are multiple directions being explored in the field of humanaugmentation, each with their own challenges. However, one of themost difficult challenges with promising outcomes is augmenting
foot. In this studio, we plan to scratch the surface of this problem
and subtly make people aware of these challenges in foot augmentation. The studio offers a space for participants to ideate, prototype
and reflect to understand different augmentation methods and geta chance to design and implement their own augmentation. Specifically, the high-level learning goals of the studio are as follows:• Explore existing foot augmentation approaches and learn
about the opportunities and challenges.
• Ideate, prototype and reflect to understand different augmentation methods like embodied and hermeneutic augmentation and their respective advantages and disadvantages.
• Using iterative and modular design approaches, rapid prototyping, while understanding and empathizing with thechallenges of software and hardware integration into a comfortable wearable foot interface.

2.2

Materials to be ExploredThis studio will primarily be based on prototypes and materials
provided by the organizers. These will include:• Haptic Servos [18], a system rendering vibration coupledwith user action.
• The next iteration of TactJam [26] to prototype vibrotactile
patterns collaboratively.
• Gymsoles++ [4], A prototype to provide feedback of centerof pressure using vibration motors.
• TickleFoot [2], A novel actuation mechanism that can renderhuman tickling action.
• Augmented shoes [25] that alter the perceived softness of
the walking surface.
• Materials to build custom shoes and shoe soles prototypes.

3

STUDIO SCHEDULE

This studio is an interactive event lasting for 6 hours (table 1). There
will be three main sessions which focus on ideation, prototyping
and synthesis. The ideation session focuses on brainstorming ideas
which the participants want to explore, along with themes listed
in section 2. In the hands-on session, participants will actualize
their ideas while gaining experience in exploring and implementing different augmentation strategies. They would also be able toextensively explore the prototypes brought by the organizers andother participants for inspiration. The final session will be a roundof prototype demonstrations, followed by a group reflection session among all participants and organizers. The demonstrations

Foot Augmentation 101: Design your own Augmented Experiences

TEI ’24, February 11–14, 2024, Cork, Ireland

Table 1: Detailed schedule of the studio.
DurationOpen

60 minutes
5 minutes
5 minutes
20 minutes
30 minutes

Break

10 minutes

Ideate50 minutes
30 minutes
20 minutes

Lunch Break

60 minutes

Hands On

120 minutes

Break

10 minutes

Synthesize

50 minutes
30 minutes
15 minutes
5 minutes

Description
Introducing the studioOn-boarding
Introducing foot augmentations
Organizer and participant introductions
Prototypes and material exploration
Group Discussion #1
Brainstorming and exploring augmentations
Presenting and pitching ideas
Exploring, prototyping and implementation

Group Discussion #2
Promising augmentations, modalities, tools
Concluding results and artifacts
Next steps and closing

will be accompanied by PechaKucha1 visually highlighting the designed artifacts and main takeaways. Therefore, we will prepare
dedicated slide decks and provide participants support during thehand-on session. Following the demonstrations, we plan to reflect
the experiences gained during the ideation and prototyping phases.
We plan to guide these sessions with questions like, ‘What type offoot augmentations are promising? Are there lessons learned acrossaugmentation modalities? What tools (hardware and software) do weneed?’ Based on the reflections, the studio will conclude with deriving the next steps in foot augmentations and formulating specificgoals for a follow-up publication.

4

STUDIO SUPPORTING RESOURCES

We will create a website for this studio providing relevant information about the studio’s context, a reading list of inspiring prior
work, schedule, details of provided materials including tutorials
and documentation, and a call for participation including important
dates. Furthermore, we will set up a Discord server to engage withparticipants before, during (mainly for virtual participants), andafter the studio. This might form a diverse community around thefield of foot augmentation, help organize and discuss a write-up of
the results afterward.
A Miro board would serve as a centralized hub for sharing ideas,
insights, and outcomes, ensuring that everyone involved has anopportunity to contribute and access the collected information.
Prior to the event, we will grant participants access to this board sothey can input the things and materials they intend to bring to thestudio. During the studio, the organizers will create a photo-wallon Miro to document certain aspects of the ideation and design
process as well as the final artifacts, which can serve as resources fora follow-up article or further iterations leading to future research.
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PechaKucha, last accessed on October 23, 2023

All resources will remain accessible and editable for participantson Miro after the studio.

5

POST-STUDIO PLANS

Based on the hands-on experience on developing foot augmentations during the studio, we aim to articulate a design space, including a collection of sensing, actuation and interaction scenarios that
could foster future foot augmentations. We will offer participants
to co-author a write-up of the results as a journal article in ToCHIor conference paper for subsequent TEI, which was done similarly
for a previous studio at TEI’21 [24, 26]. Potential topics for such
follow-up publications are, 1) the design space of foot augmentations, 2) strategies for ideation to fabrication of foot interfaces, or3) Design guidelines for foot augmentation. We believe this studiowill serve as a collaboration platform for future work.

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