SketchComm: a tool to support rich and flexible asynchronous communication of early design ideas

When designers explain their early design ideas to others, they usually use face-to-face communication along with sketches. In practice, however, sometimes face-to-face meetings are not possible, and designers have to rely on asynchronous communication. Important contextual information that is available in face-to-face meetings often becomes missing in such asynchronous communications, which can lead to confusion and misunderstanding. To address this challenge, we present SketchComm: an enhanced tool to support rich and flexible asynchronous communication of early design ideas. The key of the system is to allow designers to capture and communicate important contextual information to the audience in addition to sketches. A user study with designers and audience demonstrated effectiveness of asynchronous early design communication using SketchComm.

[1]  Desney S. Tan,et al.  InkSeine: In Situ search for active note taking , 2007, CHI.

[2]  David Bargeron,et al.  Asynchronous Collaboration Around Multimedia Applied to On-Demand Education , 2002, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[3]  Hiroshi Ishii,et al.  CopyCAD: remixing physical objects with copy and paste from the real world , 2010, UIST '10.

[4]  Dragutin Petkovic,et al.  Asynchronous multimedia annotations for web-based collaboration in biology education , 2005, IS&T/SPIE Electronic Imaging.

[5]  James A. Landay,et al.  K-sketch: a 'kinetic' sketch pad for novice animators , 2008, CHI.

[6]  Mark W. Newman,et al.  DENIM: an informal tool for early stage web site design , 2001, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[7]  Jean-Bernard Martens,et al.  Design TeamMate: a platform to support design activities of small teams , 2010, AVI.

[8]  W. Buxton,et al.  Boom chameleon: simultaneous capture of 3D viewpoint, voice and gesture annotations on a spatially-aware display , 2002, UIST '02.

[9]  William Buxton,et al.  Boom chameleon: simultaneous capture of 3D viewpoint, voice and gesture annotations on a spatially-aware display , 2002, UIST '02.

[10]  Scott L. Minneman,et al.  Where were we: making and using near-synchronous, pre-narrative video , 1993, MULTIMEDIA '93.

[11]  Björn Hartmann,et al.  Pictionaire: supporting collaborative design work by integrating physical and digital artifacts , 2010, CSCW '10.

[12]  Ellen Yi-Luen Do,et al.  Sketching annotations in a 3D web environment , 2002, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[13]  Sheelagh Carpendale,et al.  Sketching user experiences , 2012 .

[14]  James A. Landay,et al.  Interactive sketching for the early stages of user interface design , 1995, CHI '95.

[15]  Peter Brandl,et al.  NiCEBook: supporting natural note taking , 2010, CHI.

[16]  Ravin Balakrishnan,et al.  ILoveSketch: as-natural-as-possible sketching system for creating 3d curve models , 2008, UIST '08.

[17]  Pattie Maes,et al.  MemTable: an integrated system for capture and recall of shared histories in group workspaces , 2011, CHI.

[18]  Ivan E. Sutherland,et al.  Sketchpad: a man-machine graphical communication system , 1899, AFIPS '63 (Spring).

[19]  Hiroshi Ishii,et al.  I/O brush: drawing with everyday objects as ink , 2004, CHI.

[20]  Ellen Yi-Luen Do,et al.  Demonstrating the electronic cocktail napkin: a paper-like interface for early design , 1996, CHI Conference Companion.

[21]  Xiang Cao,et al.  Telling the whole story: anticipation, inspiration and reputation in a field deployment of TellTable , 2010, CSCW '10.

[22]  Alex S. Taylor,et al.  Design's processional character , 2010, Conference on Designing Interactive Systems.

[23]  Ivan E. Sutherland,et al.  Sketchpad a Man-Machine Graphical Communication System , 1964 .

[24]  Ivan E. Sutherland,et al.  Sketch pad a man-machine graphical communication system , 1964, DAC.

[25]  Brian R. Johnson,et al.  The Design Amanuensis An Instrument for Multimodal Design Capture and Playback , 2001 .

[26]  Frank M. Shipman,et al.  Supporting communication between designers with artifact-centered evolving information spaces , 1992, CSCW '92.