miniStudio: Designers' Tool for Prototyping Ubicomp Space with Interactive Miniature

Recently, it has become common for designers to deal with complex and large-scale ubicomp or IoT spaces. Designers without technical implementation skills have difficulties in prototyping such spaces, especially in the early phases of design. We present miniStudio, a designers' tool for prototyping ubicomp space with proxemic interactions. It is built on designers' existing software and modeling materials (Photoshop, Lego, and paper). Interactions can be defined in Photoshop based on five spatial relations: location, distance, motion, orientation, and custom. Projection-based augmented reality was applied to miniatures in order to enable tangible interactions and dynamic representations. Hidden marker stickers and a camera-projector system enable the unobtrusive integration of digital images on the physical miniature. Through the user study with 12 designers and researchers in the ubicomp field, we found that miniStudio supported rapid prototyping of large and complex ideas with multiple connected components. Based on the tool development and the study, we discuss the implications for prototyping ubicomp environments in the early phase of the design.