USER EXPERIENCE
AUTOCAD 360 SMART DRAWING TOOLS
Company:
Autodesk
Product:
AutoCAD 360 Mobile
Year:
2015-2016
My Roles:
Interaction Design, Wireframing, Prototyping, Icon Design
The Challenge:
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AutoCAD for mobile was built on top of infrastructure from its web-based predecessor.
This means a lot of the interactions on the touch based device, were based on mouse and keyboard interactions. While this did the job, i felt that the full capabilities of the touch device were not taken full advantage of.
AutoCAD 360 Quick Measure Tool. Users can simply tap inside an area to get its measurements.
Process:
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A developer on the team, based on published academic research, had developed a simple gesture based drawing tool that allowed the user the draw, and corrected those drawings into simple shapes like lines, circles, rectangles. It existed in the app for a few years, and i pushed for it to be improved to become a substantial alternative to the “classic” drawing tools.
A list of requirements was made, to be able to act as an MVP. Once an MVP was achieved, it was to be tested against the classic tools to figure out whether there is an improvement in time and accuracy when created basic architectural floorplans.
Prototypes were created in After Effects to demonstrate the possibilities and actions, and I worked tightly with Core team developers to achieve fully functioning tools.
Polyline Drawing Demo (made using After Effects)
Circle Drawing Demo (made using After Effects)
This process was mostly done as an “unofficial” project as part of company hackathons and personal time, until it was picked up as a collaboration project with Apple to demonstrate capabilities of the then-new Apple Pencil.
Apple’s Phil Shiller presenting AutoCAD 360 with Smart Tools
at Apple’s Keynote iPad Pro introduction 2015
Solution:
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The original “Smart Pen” allowed creating lines, circles and rectangles effortlessly by drawing them freehand and letting the app correct the shape. The tool was now improved to show measurements while drawing, and to be adjusted easily once drawing was done.
The previous way to trim lines was to select their intersecting object, select the Trim option from the edit menu and tap the relevant lines. Complicated, cumbersome and hidden.
So a “Quick Trim” tool was developed which allows quickly crossing lines or segments in order to delete them.
One of the more significant additions was the “Quick Measure” tool. With the old tools, you had 4 different measuring tools for different purposes, and making a simple measurement took several taps and a lot of effort to achieve accurate results.
The Quick Measure tool, allowed tapping once inside an object, and getting instantaneously all the distances and angles surrounding the tap.