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Designing Thermal Interactions

Towards Designing for Everyday Thermal Experiences

This pictorial helps expand thermal interaction design toward more situated experiences in everyday life. First, we map existing thermal display applications and techniques, identifying an under-explored niche of thermal displays that rapidly change temperature without touching the body directly. Second, we explore this niche with scenarios showing everyday interaction possibilities, including Candlelit Dinner, Calming Compact Mirror, Social FootBath, Fried Ice Cream, Thermal Painting, and VR Diwali, among others. Finally, our discussion contributes design directions regarding heat as a design material, personalized thermal comfort in shared settings, cultural and emotional associations with heat in everyday contexts, and facial thermal interactions. Overall, this pictorial contributes to designing for everyday thermal experiences.

Thermal Painting

Thermal Painting is a probe to explore multisensory painting, aiming to defamiliarize, or present the familiar creative practice of painting in an unfamiliar way for artists. The system provides dynamic thermal feedback based on what color the artist is painting. In a qualitative, exploratory pilot study with 20 artists, we investigated how thermal sensations influenced their creative process. Artists described how thermal feedback impacted color selection, brush movements, comfort and flow, thematic associations, and memory triggers. This prompts plans for future work around design improvements, an in-situ field study, thermal associations, and multisensory defamiliarization. This project offers preliminary insights into the interplay of thermal sensation and creative process.

As the painter applies paintbrush strokes, they experience dynamic warmth depending on what color they are painting. The heat is controlled by thermally insulating blinds that open to varying degrees, or close entirely, to dynamically vary the amount of heat that reaches the painter from the IR heater.

Examples of paintings produced by participants during the study.

Papers

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  Designing for Defamiliarization with Thermal Painting: Exploring Experiences of Dynamic Warmth in Painters' Creative Processes. 2026. Supratim Pait, Sosuke Ichihashi, Xingyu Li, Haiqing Xu, Noura Howell. Proceedings of the Twentieth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction.

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  Towards Designing for Everyday Thermal Experiences. 2025. Sosuke Ichihashi, Kosha Bheda, Noura Howell. Proceedings of the Nineteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction.   pdf

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  Swell by Light: An Approachable Technique for Freeform Raised Textures. 2025. Sosuke Ichihashi, Noura Howell, HyunJoo Oh. Proceedings of the Nineteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction.

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  Hydroptical Thermal Feedback: Spatial Thermal Feedback Using Visible Lights and Water. 2024. Sosuke Ichihashi, Masahiko Inami, Hsin-Ni Ho, Noura Howell. Proceedings of the 37th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology.   pdf

Funding

Ralph E. Power Junior Faculty Enhancement Award. 2022.

Institute for Matter and Systems Initiative Lead Award. Georgia Institute of Technology. 2024.

Code

Github Repo