Browsing by Author "Wiethoff, Alexander"

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    Paperbox - A toolkit for exploring tangible interaction on interactive surfaces
    (2013-01-03) Wiethoff, Alexander; Schneider, Hanna; Kufner, Julia; Rohs, Michael; Butz, Andreas; Greenberg, Saul
    There is a well-established culture of early prototyping when designing digital interactive systems, such as paper prototyping and wireframe methods. The culture of designing physical objects is somewhat different: early explorations of form is still prototyped via 2D sketches or renderings, but - mostly because of the construction effort involved - prototyping of actual physical objects is deferred to later stages. The problem occurs when designing mixed physical-digital systems, such as tangible user interfaces (TUI) on interactive surfaces: the high degree of interactivity means that early prototyping is vital, yet there is no viable process for prototyping both the physical and digital aspects simultaneously on a low-fidelity (low-fi) level. Our solution is Paperbox, a toolkit for exploring design ideas for tangible interaction on interactive surfaces. It supports the early exploration of different form factors and immediately provides digital interactivity for the lowfidelity TUI prototypes built with it. We observed our toolkit in use in various settings: as a brainstorming tool by junior designers; in the development of a consumer electronics product in a large industrial company by senior designers; and in a usability study comparing the effect of different levels of fidelity on the outcome. The lessons learnt will enable others to replicate and extend our approach.
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    Sketch-a-TUI: Low Cost Prototyping of Tangible Interactions Using Cardboard and Conductive Ink
    (ACM, 2011) Wiethoff, Alexander; Schneider, Hanna; Rohs, Michael; Butz, Andreas; Greenberg, Saul
    Graspable tangibles are now being explored on the current generation of capacitive touch surfaces, such as the iPad and the Android tablet. Because the size and form factor is relatively new, early and low fidelity prototyping of these TUIs is crucial in getting the right design. The problem is that it is difficult for the average interaction designer to develop such physical prototypes. They require a substantial amount time and effort to physically model the tangibles, and expertise in electronics to instrument them. Thus prototyping is sometimes handed off to specialists, or is limited to only a few design iterations and alternative designs. Our solution contributes a low fidelity prototyping approach that is time and cost effective, and that requires no electronics knowledge. First, we supply non-specialists with cardboard forms to create tangibles. Second, we have them draw lines on it via conductive ink, which makes their objects recognizable by the capacitive touch screen. They can then apply routine programming to recognize these tangibles and thus iterate over various designs.