SketchChair: An All-in-one Chair Design System for End-users

Greg Saul, Manfred Lau, Jun Mitani, and Takeo Igarashi

Abstract

We present a sketch interface for interactively sitting a 3D human character on a chair. The user firstly sketches the target pose as a 2D stick figure. The user is able to specify whether a joint will be attach to the environment(for example, the feet may put on the ground) with a pin tool. Our system then reconstructs the 3D pose from the sketch figure considering the constraints specified by the user and the interaction between the character and the 3d environments. This paper presents a user interface and a reconstruction algorithm that combines a genetic algorithm and a quasi-newton solver to effiiently find a collision free pose. An informal user study shows the effectiveness of our approach.

“Sketch Chair” is an application that allows novice users to take part in the entire process of designing and building their own chairs. Chairs are designed using a simple 2D sketch based interface and design validation tools. Thereafter these chairs are fabricated from sheet materials cut by a laser cutter or CNC milling machine. This paper explores the concepts and details behind the“Sketch Chair”application. Additionally we introduce both miniature and full sized chairs designed using the application. And conclude by presenting results and insights from a workshop in which novice users designed their own model chairs.

Publication

• Greg Saul, Manfred Lau, Jun Mitani, and Takeo Igarashi,
  SketchChair: An All-in-one Chair Design System for End-users,
  the fifth International conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI2011), Jan. 23-26, 2011, Portugal. ,    DOI= 10.1145/1935701.1935717
• Lin Juncong, Takeo Igarashi, Jun Mitani and Greg Saul,
  A Sketching Interface for Sitting-Pose Design,
  Eurographics Symposium on Sketch-based Interfaces and Modeling (SBIM 2010), June 7-10, 2010 in Annecy, France.
     ACM DIGIYAL LIBRARY

Video

Exhibitions

• The European Innovation Festival, Oct. 15-17, Belgium. photos (flickr)
• DiYDA PLAN 2010 in Germany, Sep. 24 - Oct. 01, 2010.
• DMY International Design Festival, Berlin, June 9-13, 2010.
• Miraikan Yokan-Kenkyusho 3 (Presentiment laboratory 3), May 1-5, 2010.
• Miraikan "Fun Club Week", March 13-22, 2010.

Media

• Huffington Post, Oct. 11, 2011
• ABC News blog, Sep. 18, 2011
• NEXT 2011, Beautiful Mistakes, Aug. 27-31
• fastco design, Apr. 06, 2011
• CORE 77, Mar. 30, 2011
• KICK STARTER, Jan. 2011
• the November issue of Designnet magazine, Korea
• the November issue of Weave magazine, Germany
• Livedoor HOMME
• designboom
• CreativeApplications
• Make
• Ponoko
• zeitgeistudios

Link

• SketChair (Greg's Page)
• diatom studio (London, Lisbon)