Sketching in hardware

Sketching is an essential part of any design process. Whereas the graphic designer can sketch on paper, and the product designer can make mock-ups in wood or clay, a sketch of an interactive product has to express not only the static look of an interface, but also its dynamic proper ties. Skilled programmers are able to “sketch in software” by combining quickly created components into something that communicates the essence of a proposed system. Interaction design is increasingly going to be about designing interactive physical products, not just software. Is there a way to bridge the virtual and real materials to “sketch” interactive products? A few tool kits are available to create physical interfaces, primarily aimed at computer-literate students. For instance, Phidgets from the University of Calgary allows programmers to create physical input and output devices in a similar way to graphical user interface widgets. It has been successfully used in university courses where students quickly built innovative physical interfaces. The interactive products of the future will be self-contained devices, which can take in input from various sensors, act intelligently on the information, and do something about it. Tool kits such as Phidgets allow you to produce new forms of buttons and mice to interact with what is still essentially a desktop computer. A true sketching material for interactive products should be something that can be integrated into just about any physical form and not rely on a central server. The Smart-Its project was a European collaboration with the goal of creating a physical construction kit for truly distributed applications. A Smart-It is a “stickon” computer that can be attached to any object. It features a number of sensors (for instance light, temperature, movement, and sound), a microprocessor, some memory, and a radio. Each device can collect data from the environment, run its own code and communicate with other SmartIts, as well as external servers. The original Smart-It hardware was produced by the University o f K a r l s ruhe. Lancas te r University created a set of instructions on how to build your own devices from standard components. Many innovative prototypes were created using Smart-Its, and although most of them did in fact rely on a central server, they still showed how computation can be diffused into the physical world to suppor t various activities. For instance, ETH Zurich devised an application where a piece of flat-pack furniture from IKEA provides continuous help as the piece is being assembled. Smart-Its determined how far the process progressed, and lights on the various parts would indicate the next step or warn against er ror s. The Interactive Institute designed a demonstration of a smar t restaurant environment which featured Smart-Its in a wine bottle and a (fake) piece of cheese. The sensors were used to determine the quality of the food from such factors as handling and temperature, and when the conditions were perfect, the O N T H E E D G E