Multimodality through Physical Digital Design

This paper aims to deliver a better understanding of the relationship between the physical and virtual, two dimensional and three dimensional representations of form that are employed in the critical early stages of design. It presents findings from observations of practice undertaken to provide an initial dataset on how designers move between these representations, and of the kind and quantity of information they choose to exchange between them. Informed by these findings, and in response to the emerging need for new methods of sketching and prototyping in the digital era, it will also present a new proposal for hybrid virtual/physical digital design practice based on a significant modification of an earlier approach.