About Sketchlet

Sketchlet is a software tools aiming to support software designer when they need to quickly explore, visualize, discuss or demonstrate software ideas. More specifically, Sketchlet supports:

• Rapid visualization of software ideas, using graphical editor with interactive support for languages such as UMLGraph, Graphviz Dot, Pic2Plot, SVG and so on.
• Rapid exploration and learning about emerging technologies, enabling designers to work with simplified versions of emerging software and hardware technologies, such as Web services, face detectors, sensors, speech input and output, and so on.
• Rapid prototyping of application front-ends, using techniques such as screen protptying, interactive animations, and simplified input and output software services.
• Involvment of non-engineers in the software design process, through simplified end-user programming techniques.

Sketchlet is a Java-based software tool. It combines ideas from traditional sketching, software hacking, opportunistic software development, and end-user development. The main innovation of Sketchlet is the diversity and size of its exploration space and in its extension possibilities. Sketchlet enables designers to, through direct interaction, quick explore a number of software and hardware technologies, using simple and intuitive user interface. For examples, with a spreadsheet-like interface, a designer may connect a Google search web service to data coming from a car simulator and local speech-recognizer service.

Sketchlet builds on the results of the Sketchify project. Sketchify (also known as AMICO Sketchpad) is a toolset for sketching of novel classes of user interfaces, originally developed by Željko Obrenović at the Concept Lab of the Eindhoven Technical University. Sketchify extends the concept of paper and pencil sketching to a more generic concept of rapid manipulation of interaction material. Interactive material is any piece of software/hardware that represents or simulates a part of user interactive experiences, such as inputs from sensors, output of audio tools, interaction with Web services, or simple drawings. Through manipulation of interactive materials, designers create “interactive sketches”, which in rough terms illustrate interaction scenario or interaction techniques. Our tool gives a designer freedom to combine elements of traditional freehand sketching and with numerous extensions, such as end-user programming (spreadsheets and scripts), and links to existing software functionality.

Sketchlet Builder also builds on the results of the Adaptable Multi-Interface Communicator (AMICO) project developed by Zeljko Obrenovic at the Interactive Information Access group at CWI in Amsterdam.