Personalised product design using virtual interactive techniques
This addresses the problem of limited user involvement in product design for consumers, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing virtual and interactive technologies.
The paper tackles the problem of enabling user control in product design by proposing a system that uses virtual interactive techniques to project components onto a physical model, allowing users to personalize designs through hand gestures. The result is a prototype that lets users interact with and customize product components like screens and buttons in real-time.
Use of Virtual Interactive Techniques for personalized product design is described in this paper. Usually products are designed and built by considering general usage patterns and Prototyping is used to mimic the static or working behaviour of an actual product before manufacturing the product. The user does not have any control on the design of the product. Personalized design postpones design to a later stage. It allows for personalized selection of individual components by the user. This is implemented by displaying the individual components over a physical model constructed using Cardboard or Thermocol in the actual size and shape of the original product. The components of the equipment or product such as screen, buttons etc. are then projected using a projector connected to the computer into the physical model. Users can interact with the prototype like the original working equipment and they can select, shape, position the individual components displayed on the interaction panel using simple hand gestures. Computer Vision techniques as well as sound processing techniques are used to detect and recognize the user gestures captured using a web camera and microphone.