Beautifying sketching-based design tool content: Issues and experiences

With the advent of the Tablet PC and stylus-based PDAs, sketching-based user interfaces for design tools have become popular. However, a major challenge with such interfaces is the need for appropriate 'beautification' of the sketches. This includes both interactive beautification as content is sketched and post-design conversion of sketches to formalised, computer-drawn diagrams. We discuss a number of beautification issues and requirements for sketching-based design tools, illustrating these with examples from two quite different sketching-based applications. We illustrate ways of supporting beautification, user interface design and implementation challenges, and results from preliminary evaluations of such interfaces.