MorePhone: an actuated shape changing flexible smartphone

Flexible Technology will enable computing devices to become mutable in terms of shape, behavior and movement, allowing them to form a more dynamic relationship with the environment. We present MorePhone, a prototype flexible smartphone that uses shape deformations as its primary means of both haptic and visual notifications. To inform the design of a flexible smartphone that uses shape changes to convey notifications, we conducted a participatory study to determine how users associate urgency and notification type with full screen, 1 corner, 2 corner and 3 corner actuations of the smartphone. Results suggested that urgent notifications (e.g. alarms, voice calls) were best matched with actuation of the entire display surface, while less urgent notifications, (e.g. app notifications) were best matched to individual corner bends.