ProtoBricks: A Research Toolkit for Tangible Prototyping & Data Physicalization

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Julia Dominiak, Anna Walczak, Evropi Stefanidi, Krzysztof Adamkiewicz, Krzysztof Grudzien, Jasmin Niess, Pawel W. Wozniak

Published: 2024, Last Modified: 09 Nov 2025Conference on Designing Interactive Systems 2024EveryoneRevisionsBibTeXCC BY-SA 4.0
Abstract: Building tangible interfaces or data physicalizations is a resource-intensive endeavour. There is a need for rapid means to prototype tangibles in order to facilitate research and design. To this end, we designed ProtoBricks: a research toolkit that uses capacitive bricks to facilitate rapid prototyping for tangible interfaces. Utilizing toy bricks that do not contain electronics, ProtoBricks can record brick position and color. Specialized knowledge is not required to build our system as it uses widely available components and 3D printing. We contribute the full software and hardware specification of the toolkit. We evaluate the utility of the toolkit by reporting on past use cases and prototyping workshops. We show that the toolkit facilitates creativity and effectively supports prototyping. ProtoBricks lowers the entry threshold for experimenting with tangible interfaces and enables researchers and designers to focus on the interaction with their prototype, delegating implementation to the toolkit.