Developing a physical colour input device for studying digital sketching in design

This paper presents a development process of a sketching system prototype, with a primary focus on a component that allows the user to input colour values directly from the environment. The device can be either held in hand, or the colour materials can be fed to it. The practical aim of the research is enabling a richer variety of interaction of colour in sketching type activity, and to provide insight into the design tools developed from a design perspective. The paper describes the design of the system and the user tests, conducted with four designers, who tested different approaches towards the prototype.