This paper examines the distribution, adoption, and evolution of an open-source hardware toolkit we developed called the LilyPad Arduino. We track the two-year history of the toolkit and its user community from the time the kit was commercially introduced, in October of 2007, to September of 2009. Using sales data, publicly available project documentation, and text from user forums and surveys, we explore the relationship between the LilyPad and its adopters. We investigate the community of developers who has adopted the kit (paying special attention to gender), explore what people are building with it, describe how user feedback impacted the development of the kit and examine how and why people are contributing their own LilyPad-inspired tools back to the community. What emerges is a portrait of a new technology and a new engineering/design community in co-evolution.

My research takes place at the intersection of human computer interaction, ubiquitous computing, and education. I design, build, and evaluate educational technologies that integrate computational and physical media. More specifically, I have been working in the young and vibrant field of computational textiles, electronic textiles or e-textiles, investigating soft, flexible, fabric-based computers. I have developed new engineering techniques for integrating computers and cloth, built novel wearable devices, and, most importantly, developed and evaluated—through several user studies—a suite of tools that enable novices to build e-textiles. When he coined the term ubiquitous computing, Weiser envisioned a world where computational devices, embedded in physical artifacts everywhere, would disappear seamlessly into the background of our lives, enhancing our productivity, efficiency and comfort without claiming much of our attention [15]. Though powerful, this point of view is incomplete. Technology should not be exclusively devoted to increasing our productivity or comfort, neither should it always be unobtrusive. In addition to pursuing Weiser's eloquent vision of transparent supportive technology, we should strive to develop systems that enrich our lives in visible and surprising ways [13]. How can ubiquitous computation delight and dazzle us? How can computational systems be beautiful and provocative? How might they engage new generations and

We create a performance animation system that leverages the power of low-cost accelerometers, readily available motion capture databases, and construction techniques from e-textiles. Our system, built with only off-theshelf parts, consists of five accelerometers sewn into a comfortable shirt that streams data to a computer. The accelerometer readings are continuously matched against accelerations computed from existing motion capture data, and an avatar is animated with the closest match. We evaluate our system visually and using simultaneous motion and accelerometer capture. Categories and Subject Descriptors (according to ACM CCS): I.3.7 [Computer Graphics]: Three-Dimensional Graphics and Realism – animation. I.3.6 [Computer Graphics]: Methodology and Techniques – interaction techniques.

This paper examines the distribution, adoption, and evolution of an open-source toolkit we developed called the LilyPad Arduino. We track the two-year history of the kit and its user community from the time the kit was commercially introduced, in October of 2007, to November of 2009. Using sales data, publicly available project documentation and surveys, we explore the relationship between the LilyPad and its adopters. We investigate the community of developers who has adopted the kit—paying special attention to gender—explore what people are building with it, describe how user feedback impacted the development of the kit and examine how and why people are contributing their own LilyPad-inspired tools back to the community. What emerges is a portrait of a new technology and a new engineering/design community in coevolution.

List of Figures......................................................................................................................vi