User Sensing Environments is a broad grouping of projects focusing on elements in our physical environment that can establish a more meaningful relationship with their user through the introduction of sensors, actuators, microprocessors, and wireless networks.

The Fidget Widget can either be a permanent part of a furniture piece or a removable piece of upholstery. A chair was chosen for the initial studies because it is a common physical element with which people interact daily. The embedded sensors can pick up on a range of scales of pressure applied by the user along the surface of the chair, giving a detailed profile of nearly real-time subtle and more global physical shifts. On a larger scale, the ability to embed custom force sensitive resistors into almost anything that has even a slight capacity for compression opens a wide array of potential inhabitant-centered studies of spaces and design elements.