Interface

C-Cube

Interface Design

Interface design encompasses not only digital design in the context of web and app design but also every little interaction with technical devices, whether digital or analog. In the Interface Design course, our goal was to think beyond the current trends and understand that a digital user interface may not always be the optimal solution.

My Role/Services

Prototyping, Concept & 3D-model

Team

Anastasia Lorenz

Sina Barth

Mia Wannagas

Project & Year

University Project, Summer 2022

Why we developed the C-Cube

So we were looking for a digital user interface that made the interaction more complicated than it really needed to be. As aspiring Cinema 4D users, we discovered that switching between different views while modeling a three-dimensional object can be quite cumbersome since it is often unclear which view you are currently in.

User Interface in Cinema 4D, different point of views

Your first idea, is not always your best idea

The course was about focusing on the ideation process to develop as many variations as possible. We first sketched our ideas on paper and tried out different ways of interaction patterns.

ideation process, sketching examples

Test the functionality

Based on our sketches, three different functional prototypes were created. A touch cube where the views are changed by tapping on the respective surface, a rotation cube whose desired surface has to be turned on the table and a button bar with buttons that stand for the views and are simply pressed. We then put the three prototypes into a usability test.

functional prototypes

Cinema Cube - Strong analogy

In testing, it turned out that the C-Cube (Touch-Cube) was the quickest to understand and the most intuitive to use. The physical cube has six faces, also there are six side views in Cinema 4D. This allowed us to create a strong analogy to three-dimensional space that could be applied to our digital interface.

3d-printed coat to avoid unintentional contact

final c-cube prototype

The final look

Finally, we created the design prototype, the ideal representation of our C-Cube. We incorporated a cube holder with a joint that can be adjusted in the X-axis, inspired by a linen tester. To ensure the operation is as ergonomic as possible, we avoided hard edges.

Learnings

The most difficult part of our project was the prototyping. What hardware (sensors) or materials do we use and how do we code our functional prototypes so that all functions are covered and no errors occur in the operation.