ABSTRACT
Wearable and beauty technologies face environmental sustainability challenges due to their material composition, electronic waste, and end-of-life disposal. In response, we introduce “Bio-e-Nails,” a sustainable design approach for customizable, interactive artificial nails made from biobased materials. Our work considers the accessibility of creating these nails and explores the affordances of biobased materials, such as their potential for customization and design flexibility throughout their lifecycle. This pictorial covers: (1) two bioplastic formulations for Bio-e-Nails to adjust strength, color, interactivity, and biodegradability; (2) the low-tech fabrication process of Bio-e-Nails, including customization of shape, size, and interactive features like embedded NFC or external aesthetic decorations; and (3) three end-of-life strategies for Bio-e-Nails— mechanical, chemical, and biological—that offer insights for broader design contexts. We also discuss how our sustainable design approach focused on materiality can apply to temporary beauty and wearable technologies more broadly.
PUBLICATION
2025 – Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez, Sepideh Mohammadi, Latifa Al Naimi, Shira David, and Mirela Alistar. 2025. Bio-e-Nails: a Sustainable Design Approach to Biobased Nail Interfaces. In Proceedings of the Nineteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI ’25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 46, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1145/3689050.3704426
PDF – Video presentation
EXHIBITIONS & ASSOCIATED PUBLICATIONS
- ISWC Design Exhibition | 2024
- Mirela Alistar, Latifa Al-Naimi, Sepideh Mohammadi, Shira David, Julia Tung, and Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez. 2024. Exploring the Affordances of Bio-Electronic Nails. In Companion of the 2024 on ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp ’24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 360–365. https://doi-org.colorado.idm.oclc.org/10.1145/3675094.3681952
TEI 2025: Demo video teaser
On March 6 in Bordeaux, more photos to come soon…
TEI 2025: Arts track video teaser
On March 6 in Bordeaux, more photos to come soon…
Bio-e-Nails Supplemental Material
The supplemental material contains four files: (1) Bill of Materials for Bio-e-Nails; (2) Biomaterials exploration iterations and annotations; (3) Low-tech fabrication of clay molds; and (4) Biodegradability test of chitosan-based nails.