Bringing back a dose of craft into the digital tools | Gravity Team | TEDxAthens
Designing tools that bridge the gap between abstract thought and physical realization is central to human creativity. The project's goal is to develop technology, such as the augmented reality tool Gravity, that primarily engages spatial intelligence, thereby allowing users to bypass the need to constantly translate ideas across various cognitive intelligences. The success hinges on making these digital tools feel intuitive, physical, and immediate, similar to traditional forms of art like sketching or building with Lego. ## Speakers & Context - Speaker is part of a team working in the Design Studio at the Royal College of Art in London. - The team is reflecting on their design process after working in multiple global locations (Tokyo, Taipei, Berlin, New York). - The core context is the inadequacy of modern digital tools, which disconnect creation from natural thought processes, leading people to believe they lack creativity. ## Theses & Positions - Creativity is inherent in everyone, and tools are merely extensions of this human capacity to bring ideas into the material world. - Modern creation tools are too complex and disconnected from natural thought patterns, causing users to struggle with ideation. - The ideal creative tool should rely primarily on **spatial intelligence** rather than forcing translation between linguistic and mathematical intelligences. - True creation requires bridging the gap between the digital and the physical, incorporating elements of craft. - A tool's primary function should be to remove reliance on screens during early ideation, allowing users to focus on the object itself in their real environment. ## Concepts & Definitions - **Spatial Intelligence:** The ability to visualize, understand, and manipulate shapes and relationships internally (e.g., mentally rotating cubes). - **Kinesthetic Intelligence:** The ability to learn and express through physical movement (e.g., playing piano, skiing). - **Linguistic Intelligence:** Formulating and communicating thoughts through words. - **Mathematical Intelligence:** Using logic to solve quantitative problems. - **Multiple Intelligences:** A theory stating that humans possess several distinct intelligences that develop and are used throughout life (citing Howard Gardner). ## Mechanisms & Processes - **Tool Influence:** Simple tools (like basic building blocks) inherently encapsulate a history of design and perfection, enabling creativity. - **Problem:** The process of thinking requires translating concepts between different intelligences (e.g., visualizing a shape mentally, then describing it linguistically, then having it drawn). - **Proposed Solution:** Design a tool that bypasses this translation by engaging the user's spatial intelligence directly. - **Gravity's Mechanism:** A hardware/software solution using a tablet, a pen, and augmented reality glasses/VR masks to allow sketching directly into 3D space across multiple planes, bypassing the need for traditional perspective drawing (CAD). - **Iterative Process:** The ability to quickly sketch, visualize, refine, delete, and restart the design multiple times in real-time. ## Timeline & Sequence - The team's work period involved working abroad in **Tokyo, Taipei, Berlin, and New York** over a long summer. - The design challenge was formulated in a **Design Studio at the Royal College of Art in London**. - The process involved initial theory building, developing experimental tools, and culminating in the development and testing of the Gravity prototype. ## Named Entities - **Royal College of Art** — Location of the design studio. - **Howard Gardner** — Theorist of Multiple Intelligences. - **McGregor** — Choreographer whose process inspired the team. ## Numbers & Data - The tool's demonstration involved sketching a chair, which required changing planes (2D to 3D) and potentially changing colors. - The demonstration noted that the chair creation process took as little as **five minutes**. ## Examples & Cases - **Lego:** Simple set of rules for connection, enabling creation from castles to entire cities. - **Choreography (McGregor):** Dancers repeating new moves and then using sketching in an iterative way to create live performance. - **Architecture:** The need for communication between the lead architect, 3D visualization team, and client to maintain initial intent. - **Cube Acrylic Layers:** A personal experiment demonstrating how stacking physical, sectioned idea layers can model complex thought simply and immediately. - **Gravity Demo:** Drawing the profile of a chair on a 2D plane, then using controls to change the plane, allowing the model to be rotated and viewed from all sides, suggesting depth and volume. ## Tools, Tech & Products - **Lego:** Simple building toy used as a conceptual model for structured creativity. - **Acrylic Layers (Cube):** A physical experimental tool used to model layered ideas. - **Gravity:** The developed hardware/software solution for 3D sketching using augmented reality. - **Gravity Components:** A **tablet**, a **pen**, and a **visualization tool** (AR glasses or VR masks). - **Oculus Rift:** Mentioned as a virtual reality option tested with Gravity. - **CAD / Perspective Drawing:** Techniques that the Gravity tool aims to make less reliant upon. ## References Cited - **Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences:** Cited as the theoretical framework for the team's research. ## Trade-offs & Alternatives - **Traditional Process:** Relies on translating thought via discrete intelligences (Linguistic $\leftrightarrow$ Math $\leftrightarrow$ Spatial). - **Gravity's Advantage:** By using AR, it removes the need to rely on screens during early ideation, keeping the user focused on the object in the real environment. - **Constraint:** The initial tools could not fully replicate the seamless connection between the physical and digital. ## Methodology - **Design Research:** Observing how people create in varied environments (studios, outdoors, etc.). - **Cognitive Mapping:** Analyzing the various ways intelligence types can be engaged in creation. - **Iterative Prototyping:** Developing and refining experimental tools, culminating in the Gravity system. - **Testing:** Conducting live demonstrations of 3D sketching in AR/VR environments. ## Conclusions & Recommendations - **Ultimate Goal:** To create a tool that primarily relies on spatial intelligence, connecting the kinesthetic and spatial domains. - **Philosophy:** When the right tools are given to people, the process of creation is limitless; the tool itself is only the beginning. ## Implications & Consequences - **Redefining Digital Creation:** Suggests that future creative technology should emulate the immediacy and physicality of real-world craft, rather than enforcing reliance on software conventions. - **Accessibility:** Allows non-designers or architects to quickly communicate complex 3D ideas, not just as renderings, but as editable digital objects. ## Verbatim Moments - *"imagine if we can just bring these out into some material world"* - *"The modern tools for creation are becoming so complex and disconnected from the way we think"* - *"design a tool that's going to be simple and intuitive as simple as making s castles on the beach when we were kids"* - *"there's something to be done"* - *"special we call it the Mind side"* - *"it's this time when you have these images in your head and you're understanding them rotating them and seeing them here in your head"* - *"would it be possible perhaps to switch this and design a tool that would rely mainly on the use of the spatial intelligence"* - *"immediacy is very important for them"* - *"the world we live in is the KE ingredents for logic and insights came from this"* - *"it's a small cube of acrylic layers in which you think of an idea"* - *"removing the screens from the early stage of creation"* - *"gravity is connecting uh the kinesthetic with the special"* - *"if you really put the right tools into people's hands they can they can create they will be creative"* - *"there is actually no conclusion it is only the beginning"*