Han-Jong Kim

M.Sketch: Prototyping Tool for Linkage-Based Mechanism Design

We present M.Sketch, a prototyping tool to support non-experts to design and build linkage-based mechanism prototype. It enables users to draw and simulate arbitrary mechanisms as well as to make physical prototype for testing actual movement. Mix of bottom-up and top-down sketching approaches, real-time movement visualization, and functions for digital fabrication can make the users to design the desired mechanism easily and effectively. M.Sketch can be used to design customized products with kinetic movement, such as interactive robot, toys, and sculptures.

Mechanism Perfboard: An Augmented Reality Environment for Linkage Mechanism Design and Fabrication

Prototyping devices with kinetic mechanisms, such as automata and robots, has become common in physical computing projects. However, mechanism design in the early-concept exploration phase is challenging, due to the dynamic and unpredictable characteristics of mechanisms. We present Mechanism Perfboard, an augmented reality environment that supports linkage mechanism design and fabrication. It supports the concretization of ideas by generating the initial desired linkage mechanism from a real world movement. The projection of simulated movement within the environment enables iterative tests and modifications in real scale. Augmented information and accompanying tangible parts help users to fabricate mechanisms. Through a user study with 10 participants, we found that Mechanism Perfboard helped the participant to achieve their desired movement. The augmented environment enabled intuitive modification and fabrication with an understanding of mechanical movement. Based on the tool development and the user study, we discuss implications for mechanism prototyping with augmented reality and computational support.

Rapid Smart Environment Prototyping for Early Conceptual Design

Smart environments involving various IoT devices and people in large spaces have become popular yet challenging subject matters of design. Prototyping smart environments reflecting user experiences is expensive and time consuming. Few methods and tools have been investigated to address the needs of the iterative rapid prototyping of the design subjects involving complex interactions in the early design phases. This doctoral research involves investigating methods and tools for rapid smart environment prototyping in the early phase of a design process. Experimental prototyping systems based on conceptual frameworks for dealing with peoples interactions in smart environments are proposed and evaluated with professionals in the design field. This research will add to the knowledge on prototyping tools and methods for designers and will contribute to the professional practice of designing inter-connected interactive systems that multiple users use in spaces.

SketchStudio: Rapid Prototyping Tool for 2.5D Animated Design Scenarios

It is challenging to visualize the end-user experiences of large and complex systems involving various spatial elements and multiple-user interactions. To support experience prototyping of these systems in the early design phases, we present SketchStudio, a prototyping tool for producing animated design scenarios of large and complex systems. The tool allows designers to specify the user experience over time and space by simply composing a node graph. It instantly generates unique 2.5D animated design scenarios by blending 2D sketches and 3D characters. Further, the tool supports virtual reality mode for immersive views of the created scenario prototype.

Augmented Miniature Prototyping Toolkit for UX in Interactive Space

It is challenging to envision the user experience (UX) within an interactive and ubiquitous computing space in the early phases of a design process due to the large scale and complex interactivity among multiple people and agents. To address the limitations of existing tools, we present miniStudio, a prototyping toolkit for interactive and ubiquitous computing environments larger than human scale. It consists of software and hardware kits for constructing miniature physical spaces and testing dynamic interactions in them through a combination of paper models and Lego. It also supports prototyping for interactivity using projection-based augmented reality with invisible markers and a pro-cam system in instantly created miniature spaces. We applied Adobe Photoshop as an interactivity authoring environment since it is one of the most popular design tools. From the preliminary evaluation with junior designers, miniStudio showed the potential to support the iterative exploration of interactive spaces in the early phases of the design process.

Xtempo: music polaroid for printing real-time acoustic guitar performance

We present a real-time musical score printing system called Xtempo. This system supports the recording of more meaningful musical experiences with the contextual information. It interprets the music performance and instantly prints the musical score like a Polaroid camera. This allows recording of musical composition or improvised play. We applied this system to an acoustic guitar which can be augmented by experience recording. The tablature (for guitar) is also printed with information of a performers stroke action. This system shows new potential in logging meaningful, emotional and personalized musical experience.