Designing Together: CAAD futures. P Leclercq, A Heylighen & G Martin (eds.), LUCID - Université de Liège, Liège, Belgium, 2011 557 Multi-touch: The Future of Design Interaction Irene Rui Chen 1 and Marc Aurel Schnabel 2 1 The University of Sydney, NSW, Australia 2 The Chinese University of Hong Kong, SAR, PR China A multi-touch-tabletop instrument combined with three-dimensional digitalized models is presented for design-collaborations and - communication tasks. By using intuitive gestures, the system allows users from various disciplines to communicate and share their ideas by manipulating the reference and their own input simultaneously. Our study shows that forms are perceived and understood more readily through haptic and proprioceptive perception of tangible representations. Our system provides increased potential to compensate for the low spatial cognition of its users. The paper describes our innovative integration by combining both model-based and participatory approaches with multi- touch tabletop system setups, which differs considerably from conventional visual representations for collaborative design. Our system brings the intuitive user interaction into virtual design activities, thus going beyond the common graphical user interfaces. Introduction Objects surrounding us are formed by different geometries and all geometries are about shapes. They are based on primitives and architectural designing makes use of these forms within space. The architectural design process hence, deals with geometry from the initial stage to the final construction, operating as foundation of the process [1]. Computing provides a variety of instruments for the efficient design, analysis, and manufacturing of complex shapes and geometries that go beyond basic primitives. On the one hand, this opens up new horizons for architecture. On the other hand, the architectural context also poses challenges for geometry [2].