Gesture ModelingImproving Spatial Recognition in Architectural

Design Process

Chih-Pin HsiaoGeorgia Institute of Technology

In Design Environments

The design process

• Why spatial cognition is important? comparing many different (types of ) experiences.

• Mapping models/drawings to the real world

Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, opened on July 13, 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada

The Design Process

The design process

• Designers utilize their senses of Vision, Auditory, Touch, and/or Motion in human processing part of design process.

• Stimulate the new ideas from an analogy-making process.

• Visual and motion experiences are two most important experience for spatial cognitions

The current CAAD

System

1. WIMP user interface

2. Command Line inputs

3. For Recording, Rendering, Communication, and Simulation

4. Long Learning Curve

The Ideal Scenario

World Builder, Courtesy of Bruce Branit

Many VR projects in Computer Aided Architectural Design field

Dorta, T. Kalay, Y. et al. Comparing Immersion in Remote and Local Collaborative Ideation through Sketches : A Case Study. Proceedings of the CAAD 2011. Liege, Beilgium, ACM: 25-39.

The goal

• Use Hands to Direct Manipulate the Geometry

• Simplify the Instruments / Easy to Deploy

• Easy to Learn/Use

• Help Designers to Imagine their design

Research Questions

• To what extent the spatial cognition can be involved in the process by using gestural inputs.

• What kind of visual cue do we need?

• Can our visual and spatial short term memory support us to do modeling tasks?

• What is the best way to create virtual geometry with gestures?

The first implementation

More details

Lesson learned

• There are still gaps between computer graphics and the places where the user manipulate the model.

• Gestures are still too categorical.

• It cannot produce a model with details.

• User cannot hold the hands for a long time.

• An user will have no idea of what to do in a too flexible user interface.

HOW ARCHITECTS CONSTRUCT

THE DRAWINGS?

related work

Gustafson, S., D. Bierwirth, et al. (2010). Imaginary interfaces: spatial interaction with empty hands and without visual feedback. Proceedings of the 23nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology. New York, New York, USA, ACM: 3-12.

Imaginary Interfaces

The New ImplementationIn Progress

more detailsIn Progress

• Enable Drawings on the touch surfaces (Physical and Virtual)

• Only two gestures (for drawing and extrusion)

• Users only needs to draw on one surface and extrude it for the shape of building.

• Projecting the visual cue one the users’ hand to assist them

proposed experiments• Question: To what extent can the spatial cognition be improved

in the design process by using gestural inputs?

• What’s the differences between the prototype and the CAD programs?

• How does the third dimension (Z) affects the users in gestural input system? In other words, what’s the limitation of users’ short-term memory when they work on this prototype.

• Quantitative:• The accuracy of drawing in the air.

• The speed of completing the drawings.

• Qualitative:• Post-Questionnaire

Futures

• Adding contextual visual cue for indicating the current state

• Predicting the designers’ intents and adopting their needs

• More ways of supporting creative design - parametric modeling, solid modeling, building information modeling

• Constraints of manipulating virtual objects

Conclusions

• Advantages

• Creating geometries in 3D environment

• Direct manipulate the geometries

• Help to imagine the virtual world?

• Shortcomings

• Might be slower?

Thanks!!

Gesture Modeling• Improving Spatial Recognition in Architectural Design Process

Chih-Pin HsiaoGeorgia Institute of Technology