The impact of tangible user interfaces on spatial cognition during collaborative design

The use of tangible user interfaces in new design environments promises to facilitate the designers' interaction with the design model. In order to clarify the impact of tangible user interfaces we compare the design protocols of collaborative design sessions using a tabletop system and tangible user interface (TUI) with a typical keyboard/mouse/display graphical user interface (GUI) to identify changes in designers' spatial cognition. We focussed on design collaboration because many tabletop systems are intended to support designers in communicating and developing a shared model of the design. The results reveal that the use of TUIs changed designers' spatial cognition, and that these changes affected the design process by increasing their ‘problem-finding’ behaviours leading to creative design.