Hello there, internet. Time for a bit of an update.
After Austria, and back in Finland, things have been hectic as hell (writing thesis, thesis project, seminar, two to four simultaneous projects at the same time – all this in 6-8 months) and finally, yesterday we got one of our big projects done. Freedom!? Well…
That (big) project was a concept design for real-estate business, revolving around future solutions. And yes, it is now done (for now, at least). The whole job was for big Finnish media corporation, and as such it was really interesting project to work on, specially the future aspect of it, which enabled us to fully go outside the box. Also, a demo platform was created, which was somewhat of a mad rush.
However… Lately I’ve also gotten myself involved as user interface designer, in a startup working on a social mobile platform. This is going to be interesting as it is the first time I’m properly involved with mobile platform UI design.
It seems that Synaptics are about to release new touchpad, one that it able to register 10 fingers at the same time. Tech itself seems mighty compact and quite ready for some serious manufacturing. Also, with the new touchpad, they’ve developed a demonstrator which has an OLED screen underneath and the new multitouch touchpad above. It’s also demoed in the video, check it from the full post.
Engadget also has pictures of the device: Engadget
Continue reading “Synaptics 10 finger capacitive touchpad, devkit now out there”
For some time now people (analysts?) have been predicting the death of a computer mouse, by touchscreen and lately by multi-touch. I’m, however, going to claim that both of those technologies are absolutely outgunned by a simple Logitech. And as a cherry on the top, I’m going to give my take on the computer mouse killer.
Why touch-technology has lost already
The statement that simple touch technology is going to be replacing the mouse is just simply dimwitted. Why? Simply because they are used in two completely different context: Whereas touch-screen rock the handheld world, computer mouse reigns as the sole emperor of the desktop computing. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love touchscreens and even multi-touch, however, neither of them have the power or the ergonomics of even the simplest 5€ mouse, when it comes to desktop computing. Just think of the time you use your computer daily; 2 hours? 4 hours? For me it would be something like 8-10 hours. Now, keep your hand pointed to the screen, as you would be clicking a button on it, and see how long you can go. Now, do the same test with the mouse. See the difference? On continuous use, mouse wins hands down. Sure, touchscreens are intuitive but when it comes to desktop use, they just suck. Unless. And this is big if, unless the whole paradigm of desktop computing changes to something drastically different.
Then what?
Continue reading “Killing the mouse. And no, it’s not touchscreens.”
RETYPE is a new concept for text input in touchscreen phones/devices. Instead of that huge QWERTY keyboard, which wastes massive amounts of valuable screen estate from your small screen, it relies heavily on gestures. Each key can be used to enter three letters; tap, swipe up and swipe down. It also seems that they have done some optimization regarding the letter positions, the most common letters you can simply tap, the not so common letters you have to swipe.
One potential problem with the concept though: whenever optimized letter positions come to play, the whole keyboard becomes heavily language specific. Now, of course you could optimize the layout for every language but it’s a quite big amount of work. Nevertheless, it’s a intriquing concept.
Check the video from full post
Continue reading “RETYPE the text in your iPhone”
Remember the coolness dripping user interface from Minority report? (oh, come on! who doesn’t?) Now the new company called Mgestyk Technologies is poised to take that into consumer reality.
Now, as the you might seen the Johnny Chung Lee Wiimote interpretation, Mgestyk system seems to use the same principle, illuminating the users hands with IR-light. However, they have taken it to new level using something I’d guess is some sorts of blob recoginition, which figures out the orientation of the hands, numbers of fingers etc. This in turn seems to be hooked to something that sends keypress events to the system.
I can see one problem with this type of systems. It’s not analog, like you can see from the driving & the flying games, which is a damn shame. Though this I would presume is could be fixable; just imitate joystic events.
Although I would say that I would be much more interested of applications that would be usable to day-to-day gaminglife. Like, say, driving the car in a game without the actual wheel… it’s nice as a toy but it doesn’t have anything on real-life-psysical-wheel-and-pedals-combo. Sure these kind of applications will find their way to advertising (and to CNN 
) and later on to say TV controls but I hardly can see them as the only way of controlling, at least not yet. As an way of enhancing user control on the other hand… In my last article I’ve talked about enhancing natural behaviour and the using it in the world of gaming (posture guided gaming). I would say that “bodygesture based control” work best on the secondary means of control, that overlaps the primary (possibly haptic) means of control, giving the user more precise (and in some cases and natural way of fine tuning things.
Check the video after the break.
Continue reading “Minority Report UI, consumer style”
I’ve been throwing this concept back and forth for about 6 months now, thinking if I should just publish it or try to develop it further before publishing. Well, since I don’t have the proper resources nor the time to develop it further at this point, maybe it’s just easier to publish it. So here we go, natural zooming for digital displays:
You know how you look n picture and there is n detail you want to see, like the subjects face? You squint your eyes and maybe look closer to the picture. How about harnessing this natural habit to user interface? And why hasn’t no-one done that yet?
Here is the basic idea in rough scetch:
Read on.
Continue reading “Enhancing natural behaviour – Natural zooming, anyone?”
Students(?) of Maryland and Berkeley have whipped up interesting concept of e-book reader: dual displays linked together to form book-like structure. Although the concept of using dual screens as pages of the book is nothing new in the idea apartment, the actual realization in question seems rather interesting. One can flip pages by performing flip gestures by either of the book covers, the displays can also be.. um.. un-linked so that they form their own, individual, papers, which is rather neat when working with multiple documents.
Whitepaper (PDF)
Check the video in full post
New Scientist
Continue reading “Dual-display E-book reader concept”
