ABSTRACT
The study takes focus on improving weak points of present digital drawing system such as visual diversion and interruption during the function changing. For this purpose, the digital drawing system with tangible user interface (TUI) is developed, The methodology includes research, investigation, design and modification, As for the final conclusion, the study proves that operating drawing function with tangible user interface makes drawing actions better and more fluent than with graphical user interface. Moreover, it avoids creators' distraction and makes them concentrate on their works,
Keywords: Tangible user interface (TUI), digital pen, sketch, intuition, drawing
The blooming development of computer technology has resulted in the common employment of digital creation in various design projects. Many designers have created high-quality digital works with pen-form digital input devices integrated with the present graphic application software. However, despite the indispensable strength digital illustration have over conventional paper-and-pen illustration, many designers still depend highly upon the conventional illustration methods during their concept development steps in the early stages of the design process. This is solid proof that the present illustration system hinders the process of design concept development. Design is a process of seeing-moving-seeing (Schon, 1992). Designers examine sketches to recognize, dissect, and solve problems (Simon, 1973). They focus their visions on the drawings to evaluate the feasibility of the practical functions and come up with the best solution. Hence, vision is an important part during the designing process. Excessive visual transference may distract designers' attention (Palmer, 1993). The present digital drawing systems focus on visual icon interfaces. During the process of function change, designers are required to break off from the creation process, work on visual search for the function icons, then resume the creation process. This controlling mechanism requires visual searching which distracts and interrupts the thinking process during the function changing process. On top of that, according to Fitts' law, moving distance increases control time, hence icon clicking interfaces decreases illustration efficiency (Fitts, 1954). In order to create a fluent illustration process, this study employs a physical control interface as the control method. A physical control interface allows tactile and position recognition. With a fine coding compatibility (Norman, 1988), it should be easy for users to catch on and operate with fluency during focused creative processes. On top of that, a physical control interface decreases moving distances, hence operation time. Also, tactile control trains expected operations better than visual icon-clicking control modes, hence increases control speed and accuracy and decreases the data processing amount (Sanders, 1993) in the long run, which is beneficial to the illustration process. This stndy introduces a physical control interface as the drawing system control mode in order to achieve fluency, speed, and concentration in the drawing process. The feasibility is also examined and tested using experiments.
