14 DAY TRIAL // A group of experts from The Open University and the University of Leeds, both in the United Kingdom, say that augmenting computer-aided design (CAD) tool with eye-tracking technologies could easily remove some of the boundaries that using these programs places on human creativity.
The team decided to call their approach “Designing with Vision.” One of its main objectives is to aid designer in recovering some of those intuitive elements that are now lost in many projects, due to the limitations working with CAD tools imply.
Experts are quick to point out that the shift from traditional pen and paper to 2D or 3D CAD tools is a good thing. It helps reduce design errors, built-in redundancy and the overall workload, while improving the quality of the finished product.
At the same time, the shift cannot occur properly if all the advantages of using pen and paper are not present within the computerized suites as well. Rather than helping designers out, digital technologies force them to bend after their demands, stifling creativity.
The UK team believes that things should be the other way around. Open University design professor Steve Garner says that constraints and creativity are not known for going well hand in hand. “Creativity is a fundamental building block of the design process,” he says.
“The eye-tracking system identifies which part of the design sketch the user is drawn to, making the human-machine interface far more fluid. The result is a synergy between human ingenuity and machine-based digital technology,” Garner adds.
In other words, CAD tools augmented with this capability basically help their users, rather than force them to comply to a rigid set of instructions. This is of great use when it comes to drawing, viewing, selecting and manipulating shapes in the early stages of fashion and graphic design, among others.
“The digitization of design could potentially stifle innovation and exclude people with a lot to offer but who work in ways that are not compatible with machines,” University of Leeds professor of design systems Alison McKay explains.
“Instead, we want to create digital design systems that are themselves designed in response to the needs of real designers,” the team member adds. A difficulty of CAD software, McKay adds, is that it cannot understand the unconscious preference that designers have for certain areas of their drawings.
Computers tend to understand the entire image as uniform, whereas designers oftentimes use certain points or areas as starting locations for adding future elements. Designing with Vision aims at making CAD tools capable of understanding such behaviors.