Tangible User Interface to Learn about Voronoi Diagrams

Abstract

This paper proposes a tangible user interface to introduce Voronoi diagrams, a geometric model that partitions a plane into particular regions. Although Voronoi diagrams have number of applications, their characteristics and drawing scheme is not familiar to ordinary people. Our tangible environment offers an interactive Voronoi diagram which is manipulated with small Styrofoam objects to indicate Voronoi sites on the tabletop. Two applications, giraffe patches and store placement on a map, were studied with visitors at a science museum. From the results of our user study at a science museum, the proposed tangible learning system turned to be highly effective for users to enhance their interest and understanding of Voronoi diagrams. Our future work includes to conduct a series of user experiments with more visitors in local museums to evaluate usability of the proposed system. Development of other learning applications is also of high importance.