Sketching animations in design and beyond Citation for published version (APA): Quevedo Fernandez, J. (2017). Sketching animations in design and beyond. Technische Universiteit Eindhoven. Document license: CC BY-NC-SA Document status and date: Published: 30/05/2017 Document Version: Publisher’s PDF, also known as Version of Record (includes final page, issue and volume numbers) Please check the document version of this publication: • A submitted manuscript is the version of the article upon submission and before peer-review. There can be important differences between the submitted version and the official published version of record. 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ISBN: 978-90-386-4250-5 © Javier Quevedo Fernández, 2017 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Printed by Gilde Print, 7512 ZE Enschede, The Netherlands Sketching Animations in Design and Beyond PROEFONTWERP ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, op gezag van de rector magnificus prof.dr.ir. F.P.T. Baaijens, voor een commissie aangewezen door het College voor Promoties, in het openbaar te verdedigen op donderdag 30 mei 2017 om 16:00 uur door Javier Quevedo Fernández geboren te Palma de Mallorca, Spanje De documentatie van het proefontwerp is goedgekeurd door de promotoren en de samenstelling van de promotiecommissie is als volgt: voorzitter: prof.dr.ir. A.C. Brombacher 1e promotor: prof.dr.ir. J-B.O.S. Martens 2e promotor: prof.dr.ir. P. Markopoulos leden: prof.dr. K. Coninx (Universiteit Hasselt) prof.dr. K. Halskov (Aarhus University) prof.dr.ir. B. De Vries prof.dr.ir. M.C. van der Voort (University of Twente) prof.dr.ir. C.C.M. Hummels reserveren: dr. J.M.B. Terken Het onderzoek of ontwerp dat in dit proefontwerp wordt beschreven is uitgevoerd in overeenstemming met de TU/e Gedragscode Wetenschapsbeoefening. Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. ― Rob Siltanen Summary Sketching Animations in Design and Beyond This thesis conducts a design investigation on the ideation, design and implementation of tools to sketch animations. The design investigation followed a research-through-design approach, where we embed the design knowledge in an artefact that attempts to transform the world from the current state to a preferred one. The contribution of this thesis is the framing and articulation of the need and challenges of creating animation sketching tools, the iterative design and evaluation of the idAnimate tool, and the reflection and lessons learned all along the design investigation, disseminated in the form of research publications. Additionally, the development of idAnimate culminated in the creation of a novel animation technique named transformation-by-example, based on multi-touch gestures. The research presented in this thesis was carried out in a series of iterative phases. The first one was problem elicitation, and included four on-site visits to companies. The visits allowed us learn about their design processes, understand their challenges and discover new opportunities. These gatherings involved interviews and workshops with designers and other stakeholders, as well as tours and presentations of their facilities. The field encounters were followed by a context-mapping study that allowed us to understand more deeply the insights and aspirations of designers regarding the tools to support the early stages of their design process. The findings provided us with the foundation for the requirements, as well as the inspiration for the tool(s) that were to be researched within this thesis. These requirements were embedded in a series of tool concepts that were discussed with the design practitioners from the companies. Amongst these requirements, the need to create dynamic visualizations in a sketch-like way emerged. One of the concepts addressed this, and such concept was selected for further research and development. The concept was named idAnimate, and it would function as the design artefact that facilitated the research-through-design approach, embedding the hypothesis, and enabling us to conduct studies to collect evidence and design relevant knowledge to validate claims. The second phase of the research began with formally defining the idAnimate tool. In its core, the concept integrates the theory and technical opportunities to facilitate people to articulate their ideas in order to generate, communicate and discuss them, without the burden of having to spend a substantial amount of time or money. For this purpose, idAnimate allows users to swiftly and intuitively create dynamic visualizations. Such dynamic visualizations may include, but are not limited to, storyboards, user interfaces, interaction techniques, or consumer journeys. The implementation of the tool originated with a prototype that embedded the fundamental elements of the transformation-by-example animation technique. The prototype was iteratively evaluated, refined and improved in collaboration with the designers and stakeholders involved in the project. The third phase of this thesis corresponds to the evaluation of the research claims, and the contribution to the domain of the knowledge and lessons learned throughout the investigation. For this purpose we carried out a number of studies. In the first one we compared in a laboratory setting our idAnimate tool with a state- of-the-art animation sketching tool called K-Sketch. Objective and subjective measures were taken, helping us to understand the pros and cons of the animation technique. The results show that the transformation-by-example technique is perceived as more intuitive, playful, and faster to use than the state-of-the-art rapid animation techniques, even at a possible loss of quality in the outcome. The target of the second study was to have a deeper knowledge of how animation sketching tools can influence the design process in a positive way, and more specifically in creative group activities. For this purpose, we introduced idAnimate in a workshop to generate game concepts conducted by an existing design team at a multinational company. The results showed that animations can be used productively for real-time exploration, communication and discussion of a wide variety of ideas, and that animations are especially beneficial when the concepts under discussion are of highly dynamic nature. The results of the study also suggest that working with animations contributes to the group dynamics, as the design collaboration may become more playful, expressive and fun, than when working with conventional sketches. The third study, of longitudinal nature, aimed at learning how animation-sketching tools can be adopted not only by designers, but also by people of different ages and occupations. For this purpose, a research version of idAnimate was released freely to the general public and distributed through an application store. The research version had mechanisms to collect analytical data as well as to survey the users. The study stretched for more than one year, and in this period more than four thousand people downloaded the application, allowing us to collect information about the usage of the tool, as well as the context of use. The study identified five communities of practice (engineers, students, teachers, designers and artists), and highlighted some of the key differences regarding their use of animation sketching tools. Differences were established in terms of purpose of creating animations, location, or the number of people involved or time spent in doing so. Last but not least, a series of reflections and lessons learned from the study methodology are also provided, mostly in terms of the lack of control over the user population, the need for adaptive data collection tools, and