Simulation and Digital Prototyping of Tangible User Interfaces

Abstract

Physical prototyping is an important part in research and development of tangible user interfaces (TUIs). On the way from the idea to a working prototype, hardware prototypes usually have to be crafted repeatedly in numerous iterations. However, this can be very time- and cost-intensive when non-standard, expensive hardware components are part of the design. This brings us to think about digital prototypes that exhibit the same functionality as a physical TUI, but reduce the amount of resources that have to be spent. For that reason, we present a middleware-based process that allows developing and testing fully functional implementations of a tangible user interface as a digital device in a 3D virtual environment.