Jifei OuResearch Affiliate

Jifei Ou
Jifei Ou (欧冀飞) is a designer, researcher and PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab, where he focuses on designing and fabricating transformable materials across scales (from μm to m). Physical materials are usually considered as static, passive, and permanent. Jifei is interested in finding ways to redesign physical materials with the characteristics of digital information, such as the ability to change shape and and to be programmable. Such new materials could be used to construct a responsive living environment, accelerate the process of design and manufacturing, and enhance our existing interaction with products. As much as his work is informed by digital technology, he is inspired in equal measure by the natural world around him. He has been leading projects that study bio-mimicry and bio-derived materials to design shape-changing packaging, garments and furniture.
An adventurer at heart, Jifei was born and raised in southwest China and has brought his design practice and scientific research to Asia, Europe and the U.S. His works have been published in academic conferences such as User Interface Software and Technology (UIST, 2013, 2016, 2017), Tangible Embodied and Embedded Interaction (TEI, 2014 & 2016) and Computer-Human Interaction (CHI, 2015 & 2016); interviewed and featured in publications such as Forbes, Discovery and Science Friday; awarded by design competitions such as A’ Design Award (2016, 2017), IXDA award (2016), CORE77 design award (2015), iF design award (2015), etc. He has been organizing workshops on shape-shifting materials with researchers, high school students and artists around the world. He is also deeply involved in the manufacturing community in Shenzhen in order to facilitate the real world application of his research.
Jifei holds an MS from the MIT Media Lab and a Diplom in Design from the Offenbach University of Art and Design in Germany.

Projects

Papers

milliMorph - Fluid-Driven Thin Film Shape-Change Materials for Interaction Design UIST 2019 2019
SensorKnits: Architecting textile sensors with machine knitting3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing 2019
KinetiX - Designing Auxetic-inspired Deformable Material StructuresComputer & Graphics 2018
Harnessing the hygroscopic and biofluorescent behaviors of genetically tractable microbial cells to design biohybrid wearablesScience Advances 2017
Printflatables: Printing Human-scale, Functional and Dynamic Inflatable ObjectsCHI 2017
aeroMorph - Heat-sealing Inflatable Shape-change Materials for Interaction DesignUIST 2016
Cilllia - 3D Printed Micro-Pillar Structures for Surface Texture, Actuation and SensingCHI 2016
xPrint: A Modularized Liquid Printer for Smart Materials DepositionCHI 2016
Inflated CuriosityTEI 2016
bioPrint: A Liquid Deposition Printing System for Natural Actuators 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing 2015
Methods of 3D Printing Micro-pillar Structures on SurfacesUIST 2015
bioLogic: Natto Cells as Nanoactuators for Shape Changing InterfacesCHI 2015
bioLogic: Natto Cells as Nanoactuators for Shape Changing InterfacesCHI 2015
bioPrint: An automatic deposition system for Bacteria Spore ActuatorsUIST 2014
jamSheets: Thin Interfaces with Tunable Stiffness Enabled by Layer Jamming TEI 2014
Integrating Optical Waveguides for Display and Sensing on Pneumatic Soft Shape Changing InterfacesUIST 2014
synchroLight: Three-dimensional Pointing System for Remote Video CommunicationCHI 2013
PneUI: Pneumatically Actuated Soft Composite Materials for Shape Changing InterfacesUIST 2013