Sketching Tangible Interfaces: Creating an Electronic Palette for the Design Community

We´ve shaped our tools and process to support design in a world of tangible interfaces and ubiquitous computing in which the keyboard, mouse, and monitor make way for granular, inexpensive devices that let people augment their daily life. Tangible interfaces can be more natural, intuitive, and efficient than the way we currently interact with digital devices and interfaces. The key to developing these innovations is the ability to use physical-computing materials early during sketching. The tools we create should let designers connect sensors and actuators to computers, to streams of information, and to personal and private networks. To innovate new methods of interaction between analog and digital interfaces, we must be able to not only imagine them but also explore, observe, and demonstrate them. Besides the advantages of observing an interaction in a physically real context, there´s undeniable benefit in the ability to show tangible-interface concepts and technologies to others, rather than just describing them.