Designing Gestural Interfaces

From BusinessWeek: A Touching Story at CES

The consumer electronics industry came unbuttoned in Las Vegas this week. At the annual Consumer Electronics Show, which kicked off Jan. 7, companies from around the world unveiled myriad devices boasting touch-sensitive technology, rather than traditional push-button controls.

Motorola (MOT), Sony (SNE), and LG Electronics all showed off touch-screen phones this week. Microsoft (MSFT) Chairman Bill Gates touted a touch-screen computer, the Surface, akin to a flat panel TV for a tabletop. Even camera makers, such as Kodak (EK), included touch-screen LCDs in their devices. Touch-screen tech has been in use for years, but the impetus to develop and weave it into consumer electronics gathered steam with the June introduction of Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone. “The touch-screen industry is really getting hot,” says Jennifer Colegrove, a senior analyst at iSuppli. “Since the iPhone came out, there are a lot of companies that did not have a relationship with touch screens before that decided, ‘O.K., I want to make a touch screen, too.’”

I’m in the middle of writing chapter one of the book, which is an introduction to interactive gestures and gestural interfaces. Chapter one currently includes:

• Introduction
• Direct and Indirect Manipulation
• A Brief History of Gestural Interfaces
• The Mechanics of Touchscreens and Gestural Controllers
• The Attributes of Gestures
• The Ergonomics and Usability of Gestures
• and How to Determine the Appropriate Gesture

Is there anything else you’d like to see in an introductory chapter on this subject?

I am very pleased to announce that I am writing another book: Designing Gestural Interfaces for O’Reilly, scheduled for publication in Fall 2008. The book is based in part on the Interactive Gestures wiki that I started several months ago with A Call to Arms. This site will document the book’s progress and any news about publication.

What the book is about: Nintendo’s Wii and Apple’s iPhone have introduced the public to the power and grace of using gestures to control devices and interactive systems. But how exactly do you design for this new interaction paradigm? It isn’t like designing for traditional websites or software, but until now, there has been little written about these new interfaces, which will only grow in number and variety over the next few years.

Designing Gestural Interfaces will examine current patterns and trends in this new area, discussing emerging patterns of use, a taxonomy of human gestures, how to design and document interactive gestures, an overview of the technologies surrounding touchscreens and interactive environments, communicating to users how to use these new systems, and ways to prototype gestural interfaces.