Yuyu Lin, a Ph.D. student in the School of Computer Science’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII), worked alongside her friend during an internship and noticed she had to remove the finger braces she wore to relieve arthritis in her knuckles when she used a computer. She couldn’t bend her fingers with the braces, but she needed the braces to treat her condition.

Lin wondered if she could make a finger brace that could easily toggle between stiff and flexible—without removal— to help people facing similar challenges.

With her colleagues in the Interactive Structures Lab (ISL), Lin did just that. The team developed a fully customizable finger brace that can, with the push or flex of a finger, easily switch from stiff to flexible. Along with its versatility, the brace can be 3D printed and requires no assembly.