ACME Creativity Machine Environment (ACME) Lab, directed by Ellen Do, researches computational tools for design, creativity, cognition, tangible and embedded interaction, and computing for health and wellness. Along with the explicit name for which the acronym stands, Do likes ACME because of its lofty connotations and its association to the Looney Tunes fictional organization, A Company that Makes Everything.
A key ethos for the lab is the belief that everyone can be creative because everyone has the ability to make things. Human beings are wonderfully intricate pieces of machinery. In the effort to understand human intelligence and creativity (cognition), or how people design everything (from their meals to furniture, house, or software programs), we build models and machines (physical, digital, and interactive) to attempt to explain and simulate, or to explore the boundaries of these ideas that are inside black boxes.
Lab Director

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Alumni






Publications
- S. Sandra Bae and Mary Etta West. 2021. Cyborg Crafts: Second SKIN (Soft Keen INteraction). In Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 87, 1–3. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3430524.3444705 (Salzburg, Austria (virtual) Feb. 14-19, 2021).
- Clement Zheng, Peter Gyory, and Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2020. Tangible Interfaces with Printed Paper Markers. In Proceedings of the 2020 ACM on Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 909–923. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3357236.3395578. (Eindhoven, Netherlands (virtual) – July 6-20, 2020) [Honorable Mention Award for Best Pictorial Paper] & [Honorable Mention Award for Best Demonstration]
- Sarah Beemer, Zak Boston, April Bukoski, Daniel Chen, Princess Dickens, Andrew Gerlach, Torin Hopkins, Parth Anand Jawale, Chris Koski, Akanksha Malhotra, Piyush Mishra, Saliha Muradoglu, Lan Sang, Tyler Short, Sagarika Shreevastava, Elizabeth Spaulding, Testumichi Umada, Beilei Xiang, Changbing Yang, Mans Hulden. 2020. Linguist vs. Machine: Rapid Development of Finite-State Morphological Grammars, in Proceedings of the 17th SIGMORPHON Workshop on Computational Research in Phonetics, Phonology, and Morphology, July 2020, 162-170. (Seattle, Washington (virtual)–July 10, 2020).
- Ruhan Yang, Cody Candler, and Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2020. EdBoard: An Educational Breadboard. In Proceedings of the Interaction Design and Children Conference 2020 (IDC'20). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3397617.3397832 (London, England (virtual)–June 17-24, 2020).
- Torin Hopkins and Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2020. Jam Tabs: A Color Based Notation System for Novice Improvisation .(to appear) In Proceedings of International Conference on Technologies for Music Notation and Representation (TENOR'20) (Hamburg, Germany–May 12-14, 2020). (Due to COVID-19, conference moved to 2021; proceedings published in 2020).
- Ryo Suzuki, Hooman Hedayati, Clement Zheng, James Bohn, Daniel Szafir, Ellen Yi-Luen Do, Mark D Gross, and Daniel Leithinger. 2020. RoomShift: Room-scale Dynamic Haptics for VR with Furniture-moving Swarm Robots. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '20). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Paper 396, 11 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376523 (Honolulu, Hawaii (virtual) – April 25-30, 2020).
- Amy Banic, Erik Horwitz and Clement Zheng. 2020. Kinetic Skin: Feasibility and Implementation of Bare Skin Tracking of Hand and Body Joints for 3D User Interfaces," 2020 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW), (pp. 35-39), DOI: 10.1109/VRW50115.2020.00014. (Atlanta, Georgia–March 22-26, 2020).
- Junnan Yu, Clement Zheng, Mariana Aki Tamashiro, Christopher Gonzalez-millan, and Ricarose Roque. 2020. CodeAttach: Engaging Children in Computational Thinking Through Physical Play Activities. In Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI ’20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 453–459. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3374920.3374972 (Sydney, Australia – Feb. 9-12, 2020).
- Ryo Suzuki, Clement Zheng, Yasuaki Kakehi, Tom Yeh, Ellen Yi-Luen Do, Mark D. Gross, Daniel Leithinger. 2019. ShapeBots: Shape-changing Swarm Robots. In Proceedings of The 32nd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST'19). https://doi.org/10.1145/3332165.3347911 (New Orleans, LA—Oct. 20-23, 2019).
- Ryosuke Nakayama, Ryo Suzuki, Satoshi Nakamaru, Ryuma Niiyama, Yoshihiro Kawahara, and Yasuaki Kakehi. 2019. MorphIO: Entirely Soft Sensing and Actuation Modules for Programming Shape Changes through Tangible Interaction. In Proceedings of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '19). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 975-986. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3322276.3322337. [Best Paper Award].
- Peter Gyory, Clement Zheng, Daniel Leithinger, and Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2019. HOT SWAP: Probing Embodied Game Interfaces With Reconfigurable Controllers. In Companion Publication of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2019 Companion (DIS '19 Companion). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 183-187. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3301019.3323901. (San Diego, CA, USA—June 23-28, 2019).
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Clement Zheng, HyunJoo Oh, Laura Devendorf, and Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2019. Sensing Kirigami. In Proceedings of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '19). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 921-934. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3322276.3323689 (San Diego, CA, USA — June 23 - 28, 2019). [Best Pictorial Award].
- Patrycja Zdziarska, Felix A. Epp, Walther Jensen, Mark D Gross, Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2019. Hooze: A Kinetic Fashion Accessory for Touch and Play, In Proceedings of Thirteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI’19) p. 407-413 https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3300980 (Tempe, Arizona, USA—March 17-20, 2019).
- Clement Zheng, Jeeeun Kim, Daniel Leithinger, Mark D Gross, & Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2019. Mechamagnets: Designing and Fabricating Haptic and Functional Physical Inputs with Embedded Magnets. In Proceedings of Thirteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI’19), p. 325-334 https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3295622 (Tempe, Arizona, USA—March 17-20, 2019).
- Denise Powell, Peter Gyory, Ricarose Roque, and Annie Bruns. 2018. The Telling Board: An Interactive Storyboarding Tool for Children. In Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on Interaction Design and Children, (IDC '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 575-580. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3202185.3210778 (Trondheim, Norway – June 19-22, 2018).
- Jeeeun Kim, Clement Zheng, Haruki Takahashi, Mark Gross, Daniel Ashbrook and Tom Yeh. 2018. Expanding & Supporting Workflows Towards Compositional 3D Printing. In Proceedings of the 2nd ACM Symposium on Computational Fabrication, (SCF, '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 5, 10 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3213512.3213518 (Cambridge, Massachusetts – June 17-19, 2018).
- Clement Zheng and Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2018. Mechamagnets: Tactile Mechanisms with Embedded Magnets, In Proceedings of the 2018 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI '18), ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp. 57-64 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3173225.3173268 (Stockholm, Sweden, March 18-21, 2018).
- Clement Zheng. 2018. Unfolding an Industrial Design Approach to Physical Computing. In Proceedings of the 2018 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI '18), ACM, New York, NY, USA, 721-723 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3173225.3173344 (Stockholm, Sweden – March 18-21, 2018).
- James Hallam, Clement Zheng, Noah Posner, Heydn Ericson, Matthew Swarts, Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2017. The Light Orchard: an immersive display platform for collaborative tangible interaction. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing and Proceedings of the 2017 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers (UbiComp '17). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 245-248. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3123024.3123175 (Maui, Hawaii, Sept. 11-15, 2017).
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