NewFormsofInteraction
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The mouse, having played its role in the transformation of the personal computer, is now almost outdated. If you think about it, when the mouse was first invented in the 1960s, computers were unrecognizable from the sleek, sophisticated devices we use today. So has the mouse had its day? Technical innovations are incoming in the next year or so that promise to bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds like never before, whether that’s controlling your computer with gestures, opening programs with your eyes or extending the menu options for touchscreens with wearable devices. Take a look through our gallery of interesting innovations in the computing world.
5 Exciting Innovations That Will Change Computing in 2012
Skipping tracks and pausing your music is something that you probably do twenty to thirty times a day. If you’re at work and someone starts chatting with you, you’ll start seeking out the pause button until the conversation is done. What if you didn’t have to click a button at all? A new app by a company called Flutter lets you simply hold your hand up to your webcam to start and stop your music and it’s pretty freaking awesome. The free app for Mac is a lightweight download and once you open it up it leaves your webcam on.
Stop and Start Your Music With Hand Gestures
Microsoft Demos Super Fast Touchscreen Display - Forbes
The iPad 3 has gotten a lot of attention for its high-definition display, but there are other factors to take into consideration when thinking about touchscreen technology. Michael Humphries, at Geek.com, notes that whenever “a new tablet gets released the main question that gets asked about its touchscreen is “what’s the resolution?” It seems to be taken for granted that the capacitive touch display will just work, and we all accept a certain amount of finger lag when using it.”Brainwave-controlled skateboard is totally mental | Crave - CNET
The creator of this high-tech board, Chaotic Moon Labs , has come up with a new version called the Board of Imagination that works by reading your brain waves. That's right, a mind-controlled skateboard. You simply imagine where you'd like to go and how fast you want to get there, and the Board of Imagination will take care of the rest. It's powered by the same 800-watt electric motor and Windows 8-enabled Samsung tablet as the Board of Awesomeness, but it adds an emotive headset to read your thoughts to set the board in motion.
Singing gloves give new meaning to jazz hands | Crave - CNET
(Credit: Video screenshot by Bonnie Cha/CNET) Hand gestures can add a lot to a conversation. They can convey excitement and help you describe a scene or object. And, of course, the simple act of lifting a certain finger can quickly let someone know you're not too happy with them. In all, gestures are an effective form of communication, and now, researchers in Vancouver have found a way to take them to the next level. A team of engineers from the University of British Columbia has developed a pair of gloves that read hand gestures and convert them to speech and song, potentially giving those with speech and/or hearing disabilities another way to communicate.With the popularity of the Back to the Future franchise spawning new video games and products, Mattel is the latest company to jump in the Delorean and race up to 88 miles per hour. Likely hoping to capture the same frenzied, nostalgic excitement that was created by the release of the Nike Mags , Mattel has just announced that the company will be creating a 1:1 replica of the hover board used by Michael J. Fox’s character in both Back to the Future II and Back to the Future III . As mentioned on the Matty Collector blog, Mattel will be taking preorders for the hover board between March 1 to March 20, 2012. The board will make “whooshing” sounds similar to the films and Mattel mentioned that the board will “glide over most surfaces,” but not actually hover. Mattel is targeting a November or December 2012 release window; somewhat late for anyone that was planning an amazing Marty McFly Halloween costume this year.
Mattel plans to make ‘Back to the Future’ hover boards
Apple introduces us to the Wild World of Coded Magnets - Patently Apple
Apple's Patent Background Electronic devices are common in both home and work environments. Such devices often transmit data back and forth in order to operate or share information.Lenovo IdeaCentre A720: a Microsoft Surface for the rest of us (hands-on video) | The Verge
Okay, so it's not a 46-inch table that supports 20 points of input , but Lenovo's IdeaCentre A720 does morph into a pretty sweet flat panel horizontal surface for only $1,299. Not only does it have a unique hinge that allows it to adjust the screen at almost any angle — it can be folded back to a 90 degree angle and then be pulled forward to a 5 degree angle — it's also only 25.4mm thick. Lenovo's claiming that's the "industry's thinnest" 27-inch all-in-one, but I have to say that Samsung's Series 7 seems to have a thinner profile, although that only has a 23-inch display. The A720 won't be available for a while — though it will be sometime in the first half of the year — but we do know that it will have Intel Core processors, Nvidia graphics, and up to a terabyte of storage. I got a quick look at the A720 here at CES 2012, and found the sliding mechanism to be extremely sturdy. In fact, it may be too sturdy; it required a bit of force to pull the display forward.
The usual question: Over the past 30+ years as a consultant in the field generally known as human factors engineering (aka usability engineering), I have been asked by hundreds of clients why users don’t find their company’s software engaging. The answer to this persistent question is complex but never truly elusive. This question yields to experience and professional usability analysis. The unusual question: Surprisingly, it is a rare client indeed who asks the opposing question: why is an interface so engaging that users cannot stop interacting with it?
Why Angry Birds is so successful and popular: a cognitive teardown of the user experience
Synaptics Demonstrates Windows 8 Trackpad Gestures On Video | TechCrunch
We heard a while back that Windows 8 would support multi-touch via the trackpad. Sure, there’s some stuff you can do right now, but the promise made by Microsoft and Synaptics has been deferred for the most part. But they’ve put up a video that shows just how you can expect to interact with Windows 8 and Metro using a multi-touch trackpad. You can watch the video here, but I’ve embedded it here as well for your convenience: I have to say that some of these things look extremely handy.The Story of 'Pah!', The Voice-Controlled Mobile Game - The Next Web
The Next Web has covered a broad spectrum of stories from Internet Week Europe, taking in everything from Jimmy Wales and Jason Calacanis, to what big tech firms mean for the UK startup scene and startup survivor stories. And today we were at the Power of One conference at Battersea Power Station in South West London, an event focused on getting developers and entrepreneurs together to celebrate how much the individual can achieve in today’s tech industry. Yosi Taguri was one of the keynote speakers at the Power of One.As it happens, designing Future Interfaces For The Future used to be my line of work . I had the opportunity to design with real working prototypes, not green screens and After Effects, so there certainly are some interactions in the video which I'm a little skeptical of, given that I've actually tried them and the animators presumably haven't. But that's not my problem with the video. My problem is the opposite, really — this vision, from an interaction perspective, is not visionary .
A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design
Gesture-Based Login Apps For iPad And iPhone Aim To Banish Passwords From Touchscreens - Forbes
The screen on Apple’s tablets or smartphones can pick up subtle identifying gestures as unique as a signature on a check. So why, when we log into those devices or use them to verify our identity to apps and Web services, do we still have to pretend we’re using a primitive keyboard? According to a group of researchers at New York University’s Polytechnic Institute, we don’t. For the last few years, they’ve been working on gesture-based systems for logging into those devices and their apps that they hope can abolish cumbersome passwords and make logging in nearly as simple as the finger swipe that unlocks iOS gadgets and far harder to crack than Android’s nine-point pattern authentication . With a multitouch gesture system that captures enough variables unique to users like hand size, finger placement, and speed of movement, they say they’re getting close. “When you have a touch interface, it’s silly to use a password.Kinect