Designs for the Future

The Problem: Computer aided design tools built to date have typically shared three important characteristics: (i), they are intended for use relatively late in the design process, (ii) they typically employ a style of interaction familiar to programmers but not necessarily intuitive to designers, and (iii) they capture the final product alone, recording almost none of the thinking, exploration, or rationale that motivated the endproduct. We are working to change this by designing and building a set of programs that are focused on the early, conceptual stage of design; that can take as input the familiar and natural kinds of interaction we routinely use with one another, namely sketching, gesturing, and talking; and that are capable of capturing the design process as well as the final product.