Interactive devices like mobile phones, or wearable health monitors fundamentally changed how we live and work. However, their fabrication is still exclusive to industry and manufacturing experts following a one-size-fits-all principle but cannot support a personalized design where the user can adapt a device to their individual needs and requirements. 

I argue that in the future everyone will create physical user interfaces in any shape, function and of any material. While current fabrication devices (e.g., 3D printers, laser cutters) can mainly create passive objects, I envision that in the future personal fabricators will also be able to create interactive objects that can detect user input with sensors and give feedback, for example, with printed displays. Fabricating input and output components also require the integration of functional materials into the fabrication process including conductive, color-changing, and shape-changing materials. The increased complexity of creating such objects will require novel intelligent tools that mitigate low-level knowledge and enable users to focus on the design  and functionality of interactive objects. Achieving these goals requires cross-disciplinary research advances in HCI, computer science, material science, mechanical- and electric engineering.
 
In this talk, I will address these challenges by investigating the following research topics: (1) How can we update the appearance of physical objects just like we update digital content, (2) how can we integrate computing capabilities in physical objects by seamlessly integrating sensing and (visual) feedback, and (3) how can we sense and manipulate material properties just like we change materials of a digital object in a 3D editor.