• Design-related: We produce design-related apps such as graphics design tools, mechanical CAD (MCAD) tools and app-design tools.
  • Target ease of use: We design these apps with the intent of providing a very easy to use user-interface for the designer. We have designed a new approach to user-interface design on PC platforms called InterUnit-UI specially for this purpose.
  • Target hardware usage efficency: Based on our experience with the PC platform, we design our apps to use minimal hardware resources and use them as efficiently as possible. We also conform to industry standard data exchange file formats and API specification protocols. We have identified and are targeting a specific hardware platform that consists of a mobile phone coupled with a keyboard, mouse, external screen and possible other input or output peripherals. This platform is lightweight, portable, and power-efficient.
  • Use a hexagonal-grid: We use a hexagonal-grid as a basis for the design of all graphics related tools and also for spatial layout in 2D. This greatly simplifies the specification of curves and angles compared to the commonly used cartesian-grid and it makes it easier to design screen layouts.
  • Use-centric design: Our approach to the design of these apps is called Use-centric design, where an app is designed for the requirements of a specific usage scenario and then extended later.



An MCAD tool

A 2D drawing tool

An app-design tool




Below is a brief description of various aspects of our design approach.

The Specifier is being designed in sync with the design of a bicycle-stabiliser. Hex-draw is being designed in sync with the design of a website. Ergonomix is beign designed to develop both The Specifier and Hex-draw. The design approach is not to design everything up-front for the most general design scenario, but instead design for a specific use-case, then redesign for more use-cases, then identify those tool aspects that are common across use-cases and add them to a more general-purpose tool. We refer to this as use-centric design.

All 3 apps, The Specifier, Hex-draw and Ergonomix, use a simpler UI-design paradigm (InterUnit-UI) than the commonly used WIMP paradigm. InterUnit-UI is Khitchdee Design's new UI-design paradigm that has far better ergonomics than WIMP.

Most existing tools have poor usage-ergonomics. They are all apps running inside WIMP-based UI frameworks (native or browser-based). They tend to be feature heavy, require a lot of fine-grained mouse usage and switching between mouse and keyboard use, and hence require the designer to be attentive to the app's UI to a large degree. Shapr3D is a recent MCAD tool that targets better usage-ergonomics.

All 3 apps are being written in C++ and use the native libraries provided by platform vendors. Hex-draw includes a specially designed hex-grid based 2D graphics library that connects with a platforms cartesian grid based graphics library. The Specifier includes a specially designed hex-grid based 3D graphics library. This library does not rely on 3D hardware acceleration, and is implemented, instead, using a platform's native 2D drawing library. It is also designed with a minimal feature-set and resource usage approach.
These implementation choices significantly lower computational complexity, and The Specifier will be very responsive on average PC hardware as a native app. All existing tools MCAD have high implementation complexity and are either implemented as native apps, requiring workstation class processors, or cloud-based apps, implying browser and internet-bandwidth constraints.

Ergonomix uses standard c++ files for data exchange with other app-design tools. Hex-draw creates outputs that are compatible with existing widely used file formats. All of these formats are designed using cartesian coordinate systems. Hex-draw translates its hexagonal grid based vector data to a cartesian system in a user-transparent manner. A conversion tool to import cartesian vector content produced by other tools is planned. The Specifier will export to and import for the ISO's STEP format.