Inkling

A “back-of-the-napkin sketch” is one of the most popular ways to share an idea. But if the idea is about something dynamic, like a clock or a dance, static sketches can only get you so far. We want to sketch and play with dynamic systems so quickly and fluidly you could do it over a beer, in support of a conversation. Inkling is our attempt to make a programmable napkin.

After spending a few months on small studies, we started pooling our ideas and findings into a bigger prototype. Our focus was making a stable constraint system with two-handed gestures that felt lovely to use. We thought of this project as “Crosscut++”, and built a placeholder node-wire programming interface with simple math formulas powered by the constraint system. We approached the project bottom-up, avoiding thinking about use cases, figuring out the design as we went along by reacting to how the tool felt to use and leaping on whatever ideas it inspired us to chase.

• The source code is available for download and easy to run yourself.
• Inkling was presented at LIVE in October 2024.