Bringing concepts to life: Introducing a rapid interactive sketch modelling toolkit for industrial designers

This paper presents the results of work in progress aimed at answering the challenges faced by industrial designers creating information appliance prototypes at a very early stage in the design process. A new system centred on a hardware unit called an IE5 is described in detail. The authors argue that the new method offers a potential solution that will allow prototyping in the critical 1-2 hour timeframe which would allow genuinely iterative hardware prototyping integration in the design process' early stages. The system utilises passive RFiD embedded controls that can be attached to a sketch model without the need for any wiring or soldering. It solves the problems encountered by previous RFiD based toolkits in flexibility, footprint size, and range/connection reliability. While the system is still in development, the concept has been proved by a basic prototype. The paper identifies the system's strengths and weaknesses before discussing areas for further development.