Collaborative Multi-touch Drawing Application

Skrittler allows multiple users to engage in creative drawing by allowing you to control 10 different mark-making bots, and fling or push them around the drawing surface. You have 2:30 seconds to make a drawing and then it gets archived to a flickr set and starts the process anew. Change color and opacity by double-tapping your drawing bot as well as using resistors or attractors to affect the direction your bots travel. Fun for young and old!

One of the challenges of this project was create an application that was an interesting design experience for AIGA’s Chicago design week. Our idea was to design an application that designers could use to make designs with other designers. Since for many this would be their first multi-touch experience (other than their iPhone’s ), we needed to make it easy to use and fun to play with. We projected what was being created in real time to help draw a crowd around the device and to give the entertainment for the evening a kickass backdrop.

We used Adobe Flash and Air to author the application. We initially had some challenges defining the quantity of objects that could be moving on screen at once, so we weren’t overloading the processor and reducing CPU performance. We had a really tight schedule and GestureWorks helped us rapidly develop an interface with complex physical gestures. We could not have worked as fast without it.

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