Multi-touch - the future of design interaction

Abstract

The next major revolution for design is to bring the natural user interaction into design activities. Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) brought a new approach that was more effective compared to their conventional predecessors. In recent years, Natural User Interfaces (NUI) have advanced user experiences and multi-touch and gesture technologies provide new opportunities for a variety of potential uses in design. Much attention has been paid to leverage in the design of interactive interfaces. The mouse input and desktop screen metaphors limit the information sharing for multiple users and also delayed the direct interaction for communication between each other. This paper proposes the innovative method by integrating game engine ‘Unity3D’ with multi-touch tangible interfaces. Unity3D provides a game development tool as part of its application package that has been designed to let users to focus on creating new games. However, it does not limit the usage of area to design additional game scenarios since the benefits of Unity3D is allowing users to build 3D environments with its customizable and easy to use editor, graphical pipelines to openGL (http://unity3d.com/, 2010 ). It creates Virtual Reality (VR) environments which can simulates places in the real world, as well as the virtual environments helping architects and designers to vividly represent their design concepts through 3D visualizations, and interactive media installations in a detailed multi-sensory experience. Stereoscopic displays advanced their spatial ability while solving issues to design e.g. urban spaces. The paper presents how a multi-touch tabletop can be used for these design collaboration and communication tasks. By using natural gestures, designers can now communicate and share their ideas by manipulating the same reference simultaneously using their own input simultaneously. Further studies showed that 3Dl forms are perceived and understood more readily through haptic and proprioceptive perception of tangible representations than through visual representation alone (Gillet et al, 2005). Based on the authors’ framework presented at the last CAADFutures, the benefits of integrating 3D visualization and tactile sensory can be illustrated in this platform (Chen and Wang, 2009), For instance, more than one designer can manipulate the 3D geometry objects on tabletop directly and can communicate successfully their ideas freely without having to waiting for the next person response. It made the work more effective which increases the overall efficiency. Designers can also collect the real-time data by any change they make instantly. The possibilities of Uniy3D make designing very flexible and fun, it is deeply engaging and expressive. Furthermore, the unity3D is revolutionizing the game development industry, its breakthrough development platform for creating highly interactive 3D content on the web (http://unity3d.com/ , 2010) or similar to the interface of modern multimedia devices such as the iPhone, therefore it allows the designers to work remotely in a collaborative way to integrate the design process by using the individual mobile devices while interacting design in a common platform. In design activities, people create an external representation of a domain, often of their own ideas and understanding. This platform helps learners to make their ideas concrete and explicit, and once externalized, subsequently they reflect upon their work how well it sits the real situation. The paper demonstrates how this tabletop innovatively replaces the typical desktop metaphor. In summary, the paper addresses two major issues through samples of collaborative design: firstly presenting aspects of learners’ interactions with physical objects, whereby tangible interfaces enables them constructing expressive representations passively (Marshall, 2007), while focussing on other tasks; and secondly showing how this novel design tool allows designers to actively create constructions that might not be possible with conventional media.