EMIL: A rapid prototyping authoring environment for the design of interactive surface applications

Abstract

Interactive surfaces (IS) like digital tabletop systems offer a cornucopia of input possibilities like touch gestures or interaction with physical objects. Additionally, multiple users can interact simultaneously allowing for a collaborative setting. These aspects have increased the complexity of designing such interfaces as compared to WIMP interfaces. However, existing UI design approaches fall short of taking these aspects into account and existing design approaches for IS focus on software development. We introduce the EMIL environment that allows authors of design teams to create multi-touch and tangible user interfaces. In its core, EMIL consists of a software framework that provides interaction components (for instance, widgets like images or maps as well as interaction concepts like gestures) that are especially suited for IS. Authors like UI designers collaboratively create software prototypes directly at the IS without the need to write code. For this purpose, they use and adapt the components of the software framework in an authoring application. Authors collect and retrieve information about the interaction components in a knowledge database employing a tablet computer app. In a qualitative evaluation interview, EMIL has been well received by a design team of an advertising agency. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.