Mixed physical and virtual design environments for digital fabrication

Digital Fabrication (3D printing, laser-cutting or CNC milling) enables the automated fabrication of physical objects from digital models. This technology is becoming more readily available and ubiquitous, as digital fabrication machines become more capable and affordable. When it comes to designing the objects that are to be fabricated however, there are still barriers for novices and inconveniences for experts. Through digital fabrication, physical objects are created from digital models. The digital models are currently designed in virtual design environments, which separates the world we design in from the world we design for. This separation hampers design processes of experienced users and presents barriers to novices. For example, manipulating objects in virtual spaces is difficult, but comes naturally in the physical world. Further, in a virtual environment, we cannot easily integrate existing physical objects or experience the object we are designing in its future context (e.g., try out a game controller during design). This lack of reflection impedes designer's spatial understanding in virtual design environments. To enable our virtual creations to become physical reality, we have to posses an ample amount of design and engineering knowledge, which further steepens the learning curve for novices. Lastly, as we are physically separated from our creation - until it is fabricated - we loose direct engagement with the material and object itself, impacting creativity. We follow a research through design approach, in which we take up the role as interaction designers and engineers. Based on four novel interaction concepts, we explore how the physical world and design environments can be brought closer together, and address the problems caused their prior separation. As engineers, we implement each of these concepts in a prototype system, demonstrating that they can be implemented. Using the systems, we evaluate the concepts and how the concepts alleviate the aforementioned problems, and that the design systems we create are capable of producing useful objects. In this thesis, we make four main contributions to the body of digital fabrication related HCI knowledge. Each contribution consists of an interaction concept which addresses a subset of the problems, caused by the separation of virtual design environment, and physical target world. We evaluate the concepts through prototype implementations, example walkthroughs and where appropriate user-studies, demonstrating how the concepts alleviate the problems they address. For each concept and system, we describe the design rationale, and present technical contributions towards their implementation. The results of this thesis have implications for different user audiences, design processes, the artifacts users design and domains outside of digital fabrication. Through our concepts and systems, we lower barriers for novices to utilize digital fabrication. For experienced designers, we make existing design processes more convenient and efficient. We ease the design of artifacts that reuse existing objects, or that combine organic and geometrically structured design. Lastly, the novel interaction concepts (and on a technical level, the systems) we present, which blur the lines between physical and virtual space, can serve as basis for future interaction design and HCI research

Decoupling User Interface Design Using Libraries of Reusable Components

The integration of electronic and mechanical hardware, software and interaction design presents a challenging design space for researchers developing physical user interfaces and interactive artifacts. Currently in the academic research community, physical user interfaces and interactive artifacts are predominantly designed and prototyped either as one-off instances from the ground up, or using functionally rich hardware toolkits and prototyping systems. During this prototyping phase, undertaking an integral design of the interface or interactive artifact’s electronic hardware is frequently constraining due to the tight couplings between the different design realms and the typical need for iterations as the design matures. Several current toolkit designs have consequently embraced component-sharing and component-swapping modular designs with a view to extending flexibility and improving researcher freedom by disentangling and softening the cause-effect couplings. Encouraged by early successes of these toolkits, this research work strives to further enhance these freedoms by pursuing an alternative style and dimension of hardware modularity. Another motivation is our goal to facilitate the design and development of certain classes of interfaces and interactive artifacts for which current electronic design approaches are argued to be restrictively constraining (e.g., relating to scale and complexity). Unfortunately, this goal of a new platform architecture is met with conceptual and technical challenges on the embedded system networking front. In response, this research investigates and extends a growing field of multi-module distributed embedded systems. We identify and characterize a sub-class of these systems, calling them embedded aggregates. We then outline and develop a framework for realizing the embedded aggregate class of systems. Toward this end, this thesis examines several architectures, topologies and communication protocols, making the case for and substantial steps toward the development of a suite of networking protocols and control algorithms to support embedded aggregates. We define a set of protocols, mechanisms and communication packets that collectively form the underlying framework for the aggregates. Following the aggregates design, we develop blades and tiles to support user interface researchers

Designing and Making the Datacatchers: Batch Producing Location-Aware Mobile Devices

In this paper we describe the Datacatcher, a location-aware, tangible and embodied mobile device that displays a continuous stream of statements about its location that are drawn from a large number of data sources and which speak to sociopolitical issues. We describe how the design and our underlying research interests emerged and changed over the course of three distinct phases of development: the device’s conceptual design, its refinement to a final design, and the final detailing leading to batch production of 130 of the devices. We discuss the Datacatcher as resonant with many current issues in HCI, including augmented reality, environmental issues, political systems and using data as a design material

Plug-and-play Physical Computing with Jacdac

Physical computing is becoming mainstream. More people than ever---from artists, makers and entrepreneurs to educators and students---are connecting microcontrollers with sensors and actuators to create new interactive devices. However, physical computing still presents many challenges and demands many skills, spanning electronics, low-level protocols, and software---road blocks that reduce participation. While USB has made connecting peripherals to a personal computing device (PC) trivial, USB components are expensive and require a PC to operate. This makes USB impractical for many physical computing scenarios where cost, size and low power operation are often important

Plataforma para a configuração de ambientes virtuais interativos

Mestrado em Sistemas de InformaçãoThis dissertation presents the creation of the Platform for Setting-up Interactive Virtual Environments (pSIVE). Bearing in mind the difficulty required to create virtual environments, the platform aims to allow non-specialists to benefit from virtual environments in applications such as virtual tours as marketing or training where one could interact with elements of the environment to extract contextual information. For this, several frameworks and technologies possible of been integrated into the platform are presented, as well as which ones are more suitable. The platform allows users, from a configuration tool, to create virtual environments and set up their aspects, modes of interaction and what hardware to use. The construction of the world is done by loading 3D models and associating multimedia information (videos, texts or PDF documents) to them. Alongside its development, a comparative study between two ray-tracing selection techniques was performed. Based on the results analysis, it is suggested which technique better fits the environments created with pSIVE. The study also demonstrates the flexibility of the platform, since it was adapted to serve as a test environment. A case of study is introduced where a step by step configuration of a virtual environment is shown, as well as its use within the PRODUTECH-PTI project. Finally, the conclusions are drawn, and suggestions for future work are presented.Este trabalho apresenta a criação da Plataforma para Configuração de Ambientes Virtuais Interativos (com o acrónimo em Inglês pSIVE). Tendo em mente a dificuldade necessária para a criação de ambientes virtuais, a plataforma tem como objectivo possibilitar a não especialistas tirarem proveito de ambientes virtuais, em aplicações genéricas, como por exemplo visitas virtuais que sirvam como publicidade ou treino onde seja possível interagir com elementos do ambiente para extrair informação contextualizada. Para isto apresenta-se um levantamento de tecnologias e frameworks passíveis de serem envolvidos no processo de criação e justifica-se a escolha dos mais adequados para integrar a plataforma. A plataforma permite que utilizadores, a partir de uma ferramenta de configuração, criem ambientes virtuais e seus aspectos, bem como modos de interação e indiquem o hardware a ser utilizado. Para a construção do mundo, é possível carregar modelos 3D associando-lhes informação multimédia (Vídeos, Textos ou Documentos PDF). Paralelamente ao desenvolvimento da plataforma, foi realizado um estudo comparativo entre duas técnicas de seleção por ray-tracing, que diferem quanto à origem do feixe. A análise dos resultados sugere qual técnica que melhor se adequa aos ambientes criados. O estudo também demonstra a flexibilidade da plataforma, uma vez que esta foi adaptada para servir como ambiente de teste. Apresenta-se ainda um caso de estudo, onde se mostra passo a passo a configuração de um ambiente virtual e a sua utilização no âmbito do projeto PRODUTECH-PTI. Por fim, são apresentadas conclusões e possíveis caminhos a serem seguidos para a evolução futura do trabalho

Enabling intuitive and efficient physical computing

Making tools for technology accessible to everyone is important for diverse and inclusive innovation. Significant effort has already been made to make software innovation more accessible, and this effort has created a movement of citizen developers. These citizen developers have the drive to create, but not necessarily the technical skill to innovate with technology. Software, however, has limited impact in the real world compared to hardware and here, physical computing is democratising access to technological innovation. Using microcontroller programming and networking, citizens can now build interactive devices and systems that respond to the real world. But building a physical computing device is riddled with complexity. Memory efficient but hard to use low-level programming languages are used to program microcontrollers, implementation efficient but hard to use wired protocols are used to compose microcontrollers and peripherals, and energy efficient but hard to configure wireless protocols are used to network devices to each other and to the Internet. This consistent trade off between efficiency and ease of use means that physical computing is inaccessible to some. This thesis seeks to democratise microcontroller programming and networking in order to make physical computing accessible to all. It provides a deep exploration of three areas fundamental to physical computing: programming, hardware composition, and wireless networking, drawing parallels with consumer technologies throughout. Based upon these parallels, it presents requirements for each area that may lead to a more intuitive physical computing experience. It uses these requirements to compare existing work in the space and concludes that no existing technology correctly strikes the balance between efficient operation for microcontrollers and intuitive experiences for citizen developers. It therefore goes onto describe and evaluate three new technologies designed to make physical computing accessible to everyone

Interaction design for situated media production teams

PhD ThesisMedia production teams are the backbone of many media industries including television, sport gatherings and live music events. These domains are characterised by a key set of situational factors which significantly impact on the collaborative production workflow, such as temporality, professional concerns and mission criticality. The availability of new interaction technologies presents an opportunity to design systems to support these teams in these complex environments, leveraging the affordances of interaction technologies in response to the situated factors that impact specifically on these types of domains. StoryCrate and ProductionCrate, two large-scale real-world prototype systems for supporting situated media production teams were designed and deployed to explore the interaction design considerations that could support these teams in specific scenarios. Through an extensive analysis of these deployments, key design considerations, interaction techniques and modalities are presented that can be developed in response to the situational factors found in collaborative media production environments