Working on the interactive origami simulator at d-origami I find current origami diagrams and d-origami lack features that can make origami much more joyful and engaging. Here is my idea about hyper-diagram
- a new kind of origami diagram.
TL;DR: Hyper-diagram
is an interactive, dynamic origami diagram recreated for digital age.
Music Notes and Origami Diagrams
(or the importance of origami diagrams)
I often find a close analogy between the origami diagrams and music notes.
Origami Diagrams: Good Parts
Characteristics of Origami
- It's 3D, a spatial representational form of art, just like sculpture or architecture.
- It's the folding process that gives us the joy of creation, discovery and sharing. We usually enjoy beautiful sculptures but less likely the creation process, often lonely and painstaking process. But in origami, we appreciate the folding process as well as the finished art. Often even more than the finished origami itself.
- It's easy. Very cheap and easy to start, even for kids.
Features of Origami Diagrams
- Intuitive, easy to understand (for the most time)
- Common, simple notation (thanks to Akira Yoshizawa, the grandmaster of origami)
- Sequential yet in full timeline context
Origami Diagrams: Wanted Improvements
But I think the origami diagrams have the following problems to be fixed or can be improved:
- It’s 2D since they’re drawn on paper no matter how they try to depict a 3D representation of origami sheets.
- It’s static. The dynamic and magical transforming process of paper sheets along with the timeline is barely expressed.
- It’s not always easy to understand. Sometimes very difficult to interpret the intention of instructions especially for tricky folds. I often get stuck while trying hard to properly understand those instructions. I’m sure others have similar experiences.
- It’s difficult to create. Creating diagrams is not what many people do (usually artists and publishers do) but still are too difficult than it should be. Quite similar to architectural drawings and unlike fine arts, origami diagrams has both artistic and engineering aspect and engineering parts like geometric shapes correctness can be fully automated.
Hyper-Diagrams - New Kind of Origami Diagrams
I believe origami diagrams can be something much more dynamic, fun, easier to enjoy, and create than they are now if they have the following features:
- Full 3D - ready for VR/AR/XR technology
- d-origami already showed the possibility
- Fully Interactive - something we can act on, even directly editable
- sheet and instruction in each step is fully engaged with the user interactions such as zooming, rotation, etc.
- modifying sheet materials, background decorations, on-sheet paintings in-place
- Animated - something dynamic, alive, and living creature-like
- Hyperlinked - something smart eg. references to used bases or similar works or other media such as books or videos. Not anything new but seen enough from the web pages and ebooks nowadays.
- Self-generated - automatically created from the user’s recorded folding steps. As more features are added artistic touch can also improve.
Now What
I’m starting to build a prototype of hyper-diagrams for showing how they work and getting feedback from the users. Maybe I need another dedicated article for a detailed feature list of hyper-diagrams. Also working prototype itself accessible to d-origami users.
Your feedback is highly wanted and appreciated. Leave comments or send a message to me “innan.yun at gmail dot com”.
Reference Products
- WikiHow Origami diagrams utilizing heavy use of videos - Already has several wanted features of hyper-diagram: animated, and hyperlinked. But not fully 3D, limited interactivity, fixed viewpoint (of a camera), and (seemingly) hard to create.
- Origami diagram with the visual clue of instruction sequence path - I like the background stripe of the snake-flow path for a visual clue of the instruction sequence.
”
) to UNDO the last fold and proceed one step backward. If you make a new fold here then the last fold is discarded and the new fold is recorded. Click the “next” button (
) to restore the last fold.
) to start over. Once you start a new fold sequence, the fold sequence you’ve made so far is discarded.
) in 
Definitely need much improvement in process and workflow. Hope we could devote a fuller effort to improve d-origami once we get funding.