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Top1. Introduction
Following the vision of Mark Weiser (1991), several researchers (Streitz et al. 2005; Dillenbourg et al. 2008; Arias et al. 2000; Maldonado et al. 2006; Hornecker, 2005; Brave et al. 1998) have pursued a particular design theme: computationally augmenting everyday objects and workspaces in order to facilitate and enhance more natural interactions for users. Interactive furniture, tabletop displays, and other types of smart objects have been realized in recent times. In such a vision, the computer disappears and objects take advantage of computational capabilities to support new usage scenarios. In this article, we follow this theme and study the use of smart objects in the design studio culture.
The design studio culture has been central to the education and practice of design disciplines such as architecture and industrial design for several decades. Typically, design studios have a high visual and material character, where studio walls and other less permanent vertical surfaces are full of design objects such as sketches, posters, collages, storyboards and magazine clips for sharing ideas and inspirations. This ecological richness of design studios stimulates creativity in a manner that is useful and relevant to the ongoing design tasks (Blevis et al., 2005). This kind of organization of design studios is not coincidental. In fact, it is deeply rooted into design practices. Lawson (Lawson, 1979) suggests that designers use ‘synthesis’ when it comes to problem-solving, whereas traditional scientists use ‘analysis’. In other words, designers’ way of thinking focuses on quickly developing a set of satisfactory solutions, rather than, producing prolonged analysis of a problem (Cross, 2006). As a result, designers frequently use and produce a relatively high number of representations such as, design sketches, drawings, story-boards, and collages. The studio organization is also important for supporting and inviting design critiques (Uluoglu, 2000) as is the strongly embedded designerly practice of showing work and eliciting feedback early and often (Cross, 2006). Such practices also encourage discourse and reflection during the design process (Schön, 1983). Designers’ everyday collaborations go well beyond conversations and talks and involve communication of expressions, feelings and artistic reflections through design related objects such as sketches, physical models, prototypes, and so on.
Bringing a ubicomp technology into design studio environments would require a much deeper understanding of design practices that are undertaken in these settings. Using ethnographic methods, we studied academic and professional design studios over a period of eight months (Vyas et al., 2009a; Vyas et al., 2009b; Vyas et al., 2013) and developed a set of design implications (discussed briefly in this paper). Using these design implications, we developed a low-tech, mobile-tagging based messaging system called CAM (Cooperative Artefact Memory). CAM allows designers to collaboratively store relevant information onto their physical design objects, such as sketches, collages, storyboards, and physical mock-ups in the form of messages, annotations and external web links. In a sense, CAM allows design objects to have an individual digital profile on the Internet where relevant information can be added, updated or changed collaboratively by designers. Our current prototype of CAM integrates WiFi enabled camera phones with Microsoft TagReader clients; a set of 2D barcodes generated using Microsoft Tag’s online services; and a JAVA web server application that uses the Twitter API.