Arrow Design Environment: Initial Research Overview

Framing Concepts & Contexts

In the introduction to his 1980 book, Mindstorms, Seymour Papert offers the following reflection on the state of the computing culture at that time:

Just a few years ago people thought of computers as expensive and exotic devices. Their commercial and industrial uses affected ordinary people, but hardly anyone expected computers to become part of day-to-day life... The appearance of the first rather primitive [personal computers] was enough to catch the imagination of journalists and produce a rash of speculative articles... The main subject of these articles was what people will be able to do with their computers. Most writers emphasized using computers for games, entertainment, income tax, electronic mail, shopping and banking. A few talked about the computer as a teaching machine.

Today, there are approximately 4.5 million CAD users worldwide. This is less than 1% of the number of Facebook users and less than half the number of Photoshop users. In the last two decades, digital image manipulation has expanded from the domain of government intelligence agencies and the special effects industry to become a wholly commonplace activity of the mainstream computing culture. Three-dimensional design, on the other hand, has largely remained a niche activity.

If it appears somewhat unexpected that image manipulation has become such a prevalent practice, we need look only as far as online communities such as 4chan.org and icanhascheezburger.com for an explanation. That is to say, the internet is both technically and culturally conducive to the rapid proliferation of image manipulation tools, which like Twitter and similar text-based technologies, offers a mechanism for the quick exchange, consumption and re-appropriation of succinctly expressed ideas. The ubiquity of inexpensive digital cameras and the relatively universal desire to share pithy embodiments of one’s own life with friends and family have also contributed to this proliferation immeasurably.

In general, three-dimensional design tools are difficult to learn. Maya 2011, for instance, offers thousands of features through a multi-tiered hierarchical user-interface and extends these tools with three separate scripting/API languages. Due to the conceptual complexities of three-dimensional geometry and the user-interface challenges of representing three-space on a two-dimensional screen, creating a three-dimensional model that embodies a succinct idea is a difficult, labor intensive process. This has generally relegated three-dimensional design to the world of professional use as opposed to the online culture of rapid exchange and re-appropriation.

In the last few years, products like SecondLife and Google Maps have led to an increased demand for low-polygon-count models for use as avatars and architectural stand-ins. Google SketchUp addresses this design market by offering its users a simplified set of modeling tools as well as access to an online network of prebuilt models and templates. Other recent tools such as ILoveSketch and Pixar’s in-house set construction software, Eden, have begun to narrow the user-interface/learning-curve divide by offering three-dimensional modeling platforms that draw heavily upon the user-interaction concepts already in widespread use in the consumer markets of iPhone and iPad multi-touch applications.

As rapid prototyping and 3D printing technologies become more inexpensive and widely available, we are likely to see an increase in the market for three-dimensional modeling tools. Recently established online services such as shapeways.com and zazzle.com allow users to customize object and print designs, which can be manufactured in a variety of materials and mailed to the customer. Zazzle, which specializes in custom prints, has developed cloud-based image layout and manipulation tools in order to draw customers who do not own Photoshop or similar software. Shapeways, on the other hand, allows users to upload standard format CAD files, or, if the user does not own the necessary software, he or she can choose a template design from an online database and perform small customizations to its color and so forth. That is to say, Shapeways has not found a truly viable solution for their problem - they have not enabled their less tech-savvy users to truly express themselves in a three-dimensional medium.

It is evident that a need exists for software that is capable of facilitating a wide range of three-dimensional expressiveness through tools that are both easy to learn and capable of supporting rapid processes of design iteration. It is the goal of this thesis project to devise a system which possesses those capabilities. Arrow will attempt combine the user-interaction concepts found in modern multi-touch applications and recent three-dimensional design programs ILoveSketch and Eden with machine-learning techniques including self-organizing maps and genetic algorithms as well as user recommendation systems like those found at Netflix and Amazon. Arrow’s machine-learning components will reside “below the surface,” meaning that they will not be explicitly presented as such, but rather will offer the user subtle variations of his or her own ideas in an effort to aid the user’s creative process instead of attempting to control it.