A collaborative face‐to‐face design support system based on sketching and gesturing

Mobile and pervasive computing has seen a rapid development in the last years. Portable, handheld computing devices are getting more popular as their capabilities increase. Therefore, people having the need to work on‐the‐field have now the possibility to be supported by computer technology, for example, garden or building designers. Ad‐hoc networking capabilities of handheld devices enable the development of supporting tools for collaborative work anywhere. This paper presents MCSketcher, a system that enables face‐to‐face collaborative design based on sketches using handheld devices equipped for spontaneous wireless peer‐to‐peer networking. It is especially targeted for supporting preliminary, in‐the‐field work, allowing designers to exchange ideas through sketches on empty sheets or over a recently taken photograph of the object being worked on, in a brainstorming‐like working style. Pen‐based designed human–computer interaction is the key to supporting collaborative work. The gestures‐based command input results in a lightweight yet efficient and easy to use interface. Graph structured hierarchical documents help to overcome the problems of a small screen size.