Investigations on design tools : towards a participatory tangible board

Today's computerized software design tools fail to support designers' creativity and collaboration. Investigations of designers show that paper and pencil is still the tool of choice for early design. Contemporary computerized tools allow designers to better communicate their designs. However, if tools lack adequate support for creative sketching and collaboration then they are not useful for supporting the design process, which is by nature creative and collaborative. The Participatory Tangible Board (P-Tab) project aims to improve this situation by creating a new sensing-based interactive and tangible environment that will support a group of designers in collaboratively designing and communicating. Our goal is to elicit the requirements for the P-Tab and offer guidelines for its implementation. The empirical studies we conducted show that the P-Tab must support the following requirements: sketching, rapid prototyping, model evaluation, a horizontal display surface for small groups and a vertical display surface for large groups