Tactile, Spatial Interfaces for Designers Superimposing Tangible Media and Computation

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Tactile, Spatial Interfaces for
DesignersSuperimposing Tangible Media and
Computation

• PhD Thesis

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What happens when you insert a new tool into an
existing work methodology?
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Vision of the virtual / paperless office
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1.1 A vision of the future

• The significant advantage of such a system was
  that the drawing was not just dirty marks on
  paper, as Sutherland referred to them, but a set
  of coordinates that could be saved, scaled,
  edited, and reused an infinite number of times.

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The reality
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Questions

• How is it used?
• When is it used?
• Why is it used?
• How did it change old methodology?
• What problems did it create?

• What can we learn about interaction with
  physical/tangible Vs virtual?
• Can that be applied to mixed reality, augmented
  reality, and physical/tangible interfaces?

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Exceptions to the chart

• If a new building was designed by slightly
  modifying existing plans
• Known constraints up front limit design,
  including money

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CAD introduced the need for frequent printing
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When why? Belief a computer tool will foster
creativity and/or increase efficiency that its
all good?
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Each medium is used when it affords the most
advantage

• Tangible Digital

1. Referencing Available documentation is
examined, both physical and digital. Similar
projects are referenced, and inherited data is
utilized where needed.
2. Concept Early design phases incorporate
sketching on paper or with tangible
three-dimensional models.
3. Schematic When sufficiently developed, design
ideas are converted to digital form. Designs may
be more refined in the digital realm. Once in
digital form, analyses can be performed on the
model.
4. Development Based on the results of the
analyses, modifications can be made to the
digital model. If changes are substantial, work
may go back to tangible materials, with
subsequent conversion to digital form.
5. Presentation Drawings and a model of the
final design proposal are created and
communicated to clients and other concerned
parties.
6. Implementation Construction documents are
derived from the CAD files.
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Advantages of each

• Tangible
• Enable idea generation and creativity.
• Enable quicker and easier understanding of static
  forms and spatial arrangements.
• Support face-to-face communication among
  designers, and with clients and specialists.

• Digital
• Work directly with numeric data, at accuracies
  that far surpass those of tangible materials.
• Enable the creation of digital models, which can
  be easily and endlessly modified, and can contain
  an enormous amount of detail. Models can also be
  searched and flexibly applied to many purposes
  drawings, materials lists, analysis, and
  simulations.

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Each realm has inherent qualities
Tangible Digital tactile visual aural
olfactory spatial portable,
scalable ambiguous precise persistent reworkable
, fast intelligent copyable
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Each realm has inherent qualities cont.
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The two major reasons tangible media are necessary

• GUI doesnt employ senses adequately
• Importance of vision and touch (including somatic
  senses) for efficient comprehension and
  manipulation of tangible artifacts.
• Importance of scale and space in design process.
• Connection between pleasure and information.

• Computer is too specific
• Creativity is supported by ambiguity

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What is wrong with the GUI?

• Ishii
• People have developed sophisticated skills for
  sensing and manipulating our physical
  environments. However, most of these skills are
  not employed by traditional GUI (Graphical User
  Interface).
• Small
• You can feel your way through a physical book
  but not so with an electronic book.
• Cooper
• Characterizes most electronic interfaces as
  having behavior unconnected to physical forces,
  and labeling it cognitive friction.

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The GUI is problematic in an activity such as
design

• Schon
• describes the idea of knowing-in-action.
• Although we sometimes think before acting, it is
  also true that in much of the spontaneous
  behavior of skillful practice, we reveal a kind
  of knowing which does not stem from a prior
  intellectual operation.

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Designers want to retain the advantages of both
realms, tangible and digital

• Switching back and forth between the tangible
  and digital is frustrating, time-consuming,
  expensive, etc.

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Illuminating Clay an example of a superimposed
interface

• It allows one to design with a clay topographic
  model and have simultaneous real-time
  computational feedback.
• It provides real-time topographic analysis of a
  tangible model.
• It creates a platform for communication that is
  flexible and rich in information.

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Illuminating Clay Functionality
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Experiment hypotheses

• IC could offer a designer with an appropriate
  sketch environment, like a clay model does,
  because of the low resolution of its graphics and
  its speed, or real-time capability (providing
  advantages of tangible media).
• IC could better inform the creative process by
  providing computational feedback to manipulations
  of a clay model, thereby bringing some analysis
  to the early phases of design (providing
  advantages of computation).
• IC could, like physical drawings and models,
  facilitate communication among designers but with
  the added dimension of much richer, dynamic
  information.

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Experiment method

• Protocol analysis
• Grid

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Findings

• allows a designer to easily rough out a concept,
  although more cumbersome than just tangible
  media.
• makes the process more informed subjects found
  it easier to intuit certain kinds of information.
• facilitates communication among designers is a
  dynamic, information-rich presentation tool.
• presents the risk of over-engineering subjects
  could get caught up in the numbers.
• subjects tended to believe in the accuracy of the
  feedback, even when it was blatantly inaccurate.

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Lessons learned related to superimposed interfaces

• Appropriate scale
• Can you represent a project at an effective
  scale? Scanning area of IC was too small

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Lessons learned related to superimposed
interfaces, cont.

• Type and amount of feedback
• What should occupy the designers attention?

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Lessons learned related to superimposed
interfaces, cont.

• Real-time or not
• What is the frequency of looking?

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Vision of the future

• ? A multiplicity of tangible media
• ? Digital media capabilities for capture and
  development of digital models
• A setting in which physical and digital models
  can be linked, and convenient tools for quickly
  linking and unlinking as desired
• Paramount should be the design process itself,
  with the technology transparently enabling the
  designer