Reading #28: iCanDraw? – Using Sketch Recognition and Corrective Feedback to Assist a User in Drawing Human Faces (Dixon)

Comments:
Wenzhe Li
Summary:
The paper presents a system, called iCanDraw to teach novice drawers how to draw a person's face. It can provide directions and feedbacks for users to help draw a face as accurately as possible. It is important, because users cannot always find a instructor to teach and correct them.

The system starts with a reference image. This image is recognized by a face recognition technique, and refined by authors in order to make the template as good as possible. The users look at the image, create  reference lines, and then draw a face. Users can check whether their drawing is consistent with the template at any time, and get corrective feedback.

User studies show the good performance of the system.
Discussion:
It is a great work to teach novice drawers how to draw a face when an instructor is not available. What I appreciate more is the section of corrective feedback. In my opinion, the most important part in human-computer interaction is the feedback. The system can really give a good feedback to assist drawers to draw a beautiful image as the user study says.

However, the system is only limited to drawing a face, due to the mature techniques on face recognition. It seems not easy to extend to other pictures. I have a idea whether can allow users draw reference line themselves? Draw in the template and display in both the template and the drawing area.