User Interface Design by Collaborative Sketching

Prototypes are essential tools for design activities since they allow designers to realize and evaluate ideas in early stages of the development. Sketching is a primary tool for constructing prototypes of interactive systems and has been used in developing low-fidelity prototypes for a long time. The computational support for sketching has been receiving a recurrence of interest in the last 45 years and again nowadays within the mobile web context, where there are diverse devices to be considered. The tool presented on this paper was built with HTML5 and Javascript in order to run on any device with browsing capabilities, for the main purpose of aiding an investigation on addressing issues of multi-platform collaborative sketching.

2008

Abstract. Sketching activities are widely adopted during early design phases of user interface development to convey informal specifications of the interface presentation and dialog. Designers or even end users can sketch some or all of the future interface they want. With the ever increasing availability of different computing platforms, a need arises to continuously support sketching across these platforms with their various programming languages, interface development environments and operating systems.

During the past 45 years there has been a recurrence of interest on supporting sketching at electronic devices and interactive surfaces, and despite being sketching recognition fairly well addressed on the literature, the adoption of electronic sketching as a design tool is still a challenge.

Current interactive user interface construction tools are often more of a hindrance than a benefit during the early stages of user interface design. These tools take too much time to use and force designers to specify more of the design details than they wish at this early stage. Most interface designers, especially those who have a background in graphic design, prefer to sketch early interface ideas on paper or on a whiteboard. We are developing an interactive tool called SILK that allows designers to quickly sketch an interface using an electronic pad and stylus. SILK preserves the important properties of pencil and paper: a rough drawing can be produced very quickly and the medium is very flexible. However, unlike a paper sketch, this electronic sketch is interactive and can easily be modified. In addition, our system allows designers to examine, annotate, and edit a complete history of the design. When the designer is satisfied with this early prototype, SILK can transform the sketch into a complete, operational interface in a specified look-and-feel. This transformation is guided by the designer. By supporting the early phases of the interface design life cycle, our tool should both ease the development of user interface prototypes and reduce the time needed to create a final interface. This paper describes our prototype and provides design ideas for a production-level system.

Human-Computer Interaction-INTERACT …, 2005

2006

Abstract. Sketching consists of a widely practised activity during early design phases of product in general and for user interface development in particular in order to convey informal specifications of the interface before actually implementing it. It is quite interesting to observe that designers as well as end users have abilities to sketch parts or whole of the final user interface they want, while discussing the advantages and shortcomings.

2007

Sketching consists of a widely practiced activity during early design phases of product in general and for user interface development in particular in order to convey informal specifications of the interface before actually implementing it. It is quite interesting to observe that designers as well as end users have abilities to sketch parts or whole of the final user interface they want, while discussing the advantages and shortcomings.

A s computers grow more powerful, less expensive, and more widely available, people are expecting them not only to perform obvious computational tasks, but also to assist in people-oriented tasks, such as writing, drawing, and designing. This shift is causing some user-interface (UI) researchers to rethink the traditional reliance on methods that are more machine-oriented and to look at ways to support properties like ambiguity, creativity, and informal communication. The idea is to bend computers to people's way of interacting, not the other way around.

Sketching digital and physical user interfaces present many benefits such as naturalness, intuitiveness, ability to elicit user requirements, and ability to discover usability prob-lems. These advantages are confirmed in MIXEDSKETCH, a software for prototyping any type of user interface by sketching: a digital interface such as a graphical user inter-face, a physical interface such as a tangible user interface, and, more uniquely, mixed user interfaces that combine el-ements from both digital and physical worlds, simultane-ously or at different design stages. As the development pro-cess proceeds from early design to detailed development, MIXEDSKETCH ensures a smooth transition from a low-fidelity representation to a high-level representation of the UI being sketched through mid-fidelity. In the last stage, a precise presentation and a dialog can be sketched that au-tomatically generate a description of the future interface for one or multiple toolkits. In addition, MIXEDSKETCH enabl...

Sketching digital and physical user interfaces present many benefits such as naturalness, intuitiveness, ability to elicit user requirements, and ability to discover usability problems. These advantages are confirmed in MIXEDSKETCH, a software for prototyping any type of user interface by sketching: a digital interface such as a graphical user interface, a physical interface such as a tangible user interface, and, more uniquely, mixed user interfaces that combine elements from both digital and physical worlds, simultaneously or at different design stages. As the development process proceeds from early design to detailed development, MIXEDSKETCH ensures a smooth transition from a low fidelity representation to a high-level representation of the UI being sketched through mid-fidelity. In the last stage, a precise presentation and a dialog can be sketched that automatically generate a description of the future interface for one or multiple toolkits. In addition, MIXEDSKETCH enables the designer to transform a digital, a physical, or a mixed user interface in a counterpart in another world, e.g. moving from digital to physical to mixed.