Natural User Interface for color selection in conceptual design phase

Abstract

In most of the surrounding discrete products, style plays a very important role. Specifically, color has a great impact in the visual perception, and its meaning can vary depending on the context where the product is located. Anyway, there are not dedicated applications devoted to support designers during this activity of color selection in the conceptual stage of the product design process. In this way, this paper presents the development and evaluation of a software platform that allows the user to choose a scheme of colors of a product concept using a Natural User Interface (NUI) in a 3D scanned context. In addition, the NUI was validated and evaluated with a case study oriented to compare the scheme of colors, for a conceptual product, selected by product designers, an expert panel and the target user in order to prove that this interface can enhance the process of color selection during the concept stage of the product design process, with regards to a traditional selection process with images and user profile.