Cardographer Analyser (CDGA) is an open source web application designed to enhance the creativity and expandability of users' thinking when performing card based ideation on the digital board (Miro). CDGA is also an extension of the Cardographer platform developed by the Mixed Reality Lab (University of Nottingham), which provides real-time data analysis capabilities.

Research

Through a study of the literature and past applications of card based ideation and computer aided design, this project identifies several limitations and interaction barriers of current card based ideation tools based on physical devices and digital components, such as the threshold of user expertise, the limited space provided by cards as design concept containers, the lack of ability of cards and frames to respond to the relevance and coherence of design issues. For more research, please refer to my dissertation paper: "Extension to Cardographer: Enhancing digital card-based ideation through real-time data analysis and visualisation".

Design

CDGA has developed a variety of data analysis panels and visualization charts tailored to the nature of users' thinking when brainstorming with concept cards. This allows users to not only visualize how the selected design card relates to other cards, but also to evaluate the creativity of their card combinations and the integration of their designs with the design problem theme from a diverse and comprehensive perspective.

By providing real-time card data analysis and visualization, CDGA transforms concept cards into a composite information body that carries information related to concepts and concepts. At the same time, the convenient session data management and analysis provided by CDGA also enhance the sharing of users' thinking, thus lowering the threshold of participation of card based ideation tool for users with different expertise.

The latest version of Cardographer Analyser features an AI Assistant based on OpenAI's GPT-3 model, which allows users to get text and image tips on concept cards and product design for more inspiration and insight.

Deployment

CDGA is an open source application. You can view the installation instructions and download the source code through this Github Repository. CDGA also provides an online user manual and a user discord.

As my HCI graduate project, I am excited to see that the Cardographer research project will formally integrate CDGA in the next version update. The current future development plan is to add AI-based card matching guidelines, such as text-based card usage reference suggestions or image-based inspiration tips.