"Consolidated User Requirements and Task Analysis"
Jorge J., Fonseca M., Dias F., Ferreira A.
[PDF 5.5MB]

This report presents the results of task analysis and preliminary design for the SmartSketches project, including the result of site visits at all industrial partners of the project by most consortium members. It details a description of working environments and workflows of Italdesign Giugiaro, FIAT Centro Stile and CENTIMFE and a list of user requirements identified during the visits. Additionally, it presents a preliminary design for 2D Sketch Editor for Modelling, Sketch-Based Retrieval and 3D Immersive Modelling.

The SmartSketches project will produce one or more application prototypes to address rapid prototyping in early stages of product design. Those prototypes are to be tested and used within a company's engineering process chain and therefore need to preserve compatibility to currently used CAD modelling software and hardware, as well as eventually setting new standards in interaction and modelling techniques. This document describes design and system recommendations within the SmartSketches project. It discusses issues, such as the choice of the appropriate operating system, as well as the appropriate software, covering VR systems, modelling libraries and multi-modal input support.

This document describes input devices develope by Barskidesign / futuredesignlab who is responsible for the product design development of 3 D input tools. These include a 3 D Pen called "Cyberstilo", a 3 D Mouse called "CyberStone", a personal interactive panel and a Tapefinger. After extensive user testing with other partners we have done a detailed design, follwoed by construction and rapid prototyping each tool. Cyberstilo, the first working prototype with all functionalities, was presented at the EUROMOLD in Frankfurt, December 2003.

This document reports the user evaluation tests made to the first version of GIDeS. It describes and discusses all the procedures that were carried out in order to evaluate the usability of the prototype and the validity of the ideas involved. It also presents the comments and suggestions made by participants.

This document presents the results of a preliminary usability test of the SBR prototype, conducted at CENTIMFE. The main goals of this experiment were to test classification and retrieval algorithms and collect users opinions about the returned results and about the user interface. Tests revealed that users were pleased with results associated to their sketched query.

This deliverable presents the consolidation of the main results achieved during the individual user evaluation tests performed for each of the developed prototypes. In workpackage 7 we evaluated the prototypes implemented within workpackage 3 to 6, namely, the GIDeS - 2D modeling tool; the SketchAR ?3D modeling tool for immersive environments; the GIDeS++ - constraint-based modeling tool; and the SBR ?Sketch-Based Retrieval system. The volume and number of tests reflect an increased effort in involving end-users in this part of the design. The increase in the number of user tests, has contribute to both enhance the quality and functionality of developed prototypes, to better match users? expectations.

As computers grow in sophistication, alternative interfaces and means of inputting information are emerging. Currently available CAD systems allow for the manufacture of very complicated models, but computers have yet to become usable at the very early stages of product design, where pencil and paper still reign. GIDeS (Gesture-based Interactive Design System) is a 3D design system that addresses this problem through a combination of different concepts: a sketching metaphor provides a paper-and-pencil like interaction; expectation lists, in the form of dynamic menus, expose the state of the application without interfering with the task; and an incremental drawing model allows precise drawings to be progressively constructed from sketches through constraints.

This deliverable presents the new approach developed in workpackage 6, to classify, index and retrieve technical drawings by content. Our technique uses spatial relationships, shape geometry and high-dimensional indexing mechanisms to retrieve complex drawings from CAD databases. It supports automatic indexation of technical drawing databases through drawing simplification, feature extraction and efficient algorithms to index large amounts of data. D22 describes in detail all the steps of our classification process to content-based retrieval of technical drawings (CAD) and present the prototypes developed. Finally, it describes an extra prototype that integrates our retrieval mechanisms into the GIDeS++ modeling tool. The D22b is the user manual, where we explain how to use the resulting prototype to query a database of technical drawings using sketches, digitized images or a combination of both.

A first version of the "Technology Implementation Plan" has been created and refined in close interaction with all project partners. Project results available or planned are collected, summarised and published in the "eTIP" under http://etip.cordis.lu/index.cfm.

This document describes the protocol specified for user evaluation tests of the integration prototype. Usability tests were performed at IPE, Porto, Portugal, to evaluate the car seat design prototype. The experiment is divided in two parts, one to present the prototype and other for users to perform tasks on it. Finally, users will fill questionnaires, providing us with feedback about the application and its functionality.

A User Manual devised as an introductory tutorial was done. This manual was presented at the user test that took place at Mind's selected industrial partner on the Car Seat Upholstery industrial area. Furthermore, the manual acted as support material for the testing itself. A report was produced taking the feedback of the operators, personal observation of operators difficulties and activities by Mind's staff and insite analysis of customer requests triggered by ongoing product/prototype evaluation.

Deliverable D28 contains an online manual describing all functionality available in ICEMStyle++ including the functionality of the applications integrating SmartSketches results. The manual is presented as a stand alone PDF document also available on the SmartSketches server.

The final version of the "Technology Implementation Plan" has been created and was approved by the consortium. It is accesssible by the consortium from the "eTIP" URL http://etip.cordis.lu/index.cfm .