iShoogle - Touching and Feeling Fabrics on a Touchscreen

In June 2016 Dr Pawel Michal Orzechowski was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Sciences for the work presented in this book. From the abstract: The inability to touch fabrics online frustrates consumers, who are used to evaluating physical textiles by engaging in complex, natural gestural interactions. The goal of this thesis was to create a fabric simulator that minimized this perceptual gap, enabling accurate perception of the qualities of fabrics presented digitally. We designed iShoogle, a multi-gesture touch-screen sound-enabled fabric simulator that aimed to create an accurate representation of fabric qualities without the need for touching the physical fabric swatch. iShoogle uses on-screen gestures (inspired by natural on- fabric movements e.g. Crunching) to control pre-recorded videos and audio of fabrics being deformed (e.g. being Crunched). iShoogle creates an illusion of direct video manipulation and also direct manipulation of the displayed fabric.