The proposed Innovation Corps project will enable focused research by the team to help bring a new system to market. The goal is to offer an alternative to current computer-aided design systems, specifically by developing a tablet-based, pen-driven, proof-of-concept system that abandons the assumption that a system must maintain a valid 3D model at all times. In the exploring the middle ground between sketch and object, the proposed work addresses one of the significant problems in interactive graphics - how to move seamlessly between 2D and 3D. This understanding includes not only a computer science perspective, but also a design perspective, where practitioners have a deep working knowledge of form creation but may lack a computational or mathematical background.
If successfully deployed, the proposed work will have a direct impact on the creative design professional by making available a novel approach for creating and editing 3D form, and will also impact the communication of ideas, where 2D representations have dominated. The team's close relationship with academics and practicing designers will provide opportunities to explore and test the new approach through application to real design problems.
This Innovation-Corps project explored the viability of the commercialization of research related to sketch-based modeling. Specifically, by conducting customer interviews and demonstrations for customers, the investigators learned that the work is of interest to professional/consumer users, and, what aspects would need to be developed to address these customers' needs more spcifically. The team conducted over 125 interviews with professionals and consumers. Interviews with one type of professional often led to new insights that suggested yet others with whom the team should meet. The final outcome was learning that there is a significant market for the technology across a wide range of domains -- from architecture to medicine to advertsing to consumer. In addition, we learned that tablet computers are particularly attractive as a means of deploying the technology widely in the commercial realm. Significantly and surprisingly, the team learned lthat there is commercial interest in the research both in terms of authoring software as well as content. As a next step, the team will work on developing an alpha version of the software, which will enable additional customer testing and validation experiments. A central challenge is devising a common user interface that will easily support a wide range of application areas.
