Appliancizer: Transforming Web Pages into Electronic Devices

Prototyping electronic devices that meet today’s consumer standards is a time-consuming task that requires multi-domain expertise. Consumers expect electronic devices to have visually appealing interfaces with both tactile and screen-based interfaces. Appliancizer, our interactive computational design tool, exploits the similarities between graphical and tangible interfaces, allowing web pages to be rapidly transformed into physical electronic devices. Using a novel technique we call essential interface mapping, our tool converts graphical user interface elements (e.g., an HTML button) into tangible interface components (e.g., a physical button) without changing the application source code. Appliancizer automatically generates the PCB and low-level code from web-based prototypes and HTML mock-ups. This makes the prototyping of mixed graphical-tangible interactions as easy as modifying a web page and allows designers to leverage the well-developed ecosystem of web technologies. We demonstrate how our technique simplifies and accelerates prototyping by developing two devices with Appliancizer.