Interactive Gestures: Designing Gestural Interfaces

Bruce “Tog” Tognazzini predicts the death of the mouse in a recent Financial Times article. The replacement? Why our fingers of course.

“In many ways, our continued reliance on the computer mouse reduces us to little more than cavemen, running around pointing at symbols and ‘grunting’ with each click,” he says. “A revolution is long overdue, because we need more sophisticated tools that will allow us to increase our vocabulary way beyond that caveman grunt.” Plus, the link between the computer mouse and cases of repetitive strain injury (RSI) are hardly an argument in its favour, he adds.

Luckily, he says, those “more sophisticated” tools are right in front of our faces and we already know how to use them. They are, in fact, our fingers.

“Look at the facts: we’ve typically got 10 of these ‘tools’; they move in a multitude of different ways; and gestural language, which came long before verbal language, is an established and intuitive form of self-expression. Even primates can be trained to express needs and intentions using their fingers,” he points out.

I make a similar claim in the last chapter of the book in the section “Supplanting the Desktop Metaphor?”:

The most vulnerable part of our existing PC setup is the mouse: the mouse could be replaced (and on many laptops has already been replaced) by touchpads or gestural means of controlling the cursor and other onscreen objects.

Only time will tell, of course.

Pre-Order on Amazon

I’m in the middle of filling out the interactive gesture patterns of the book, and I need photos of examples of some of these patterns. Do you have any or know of any?

Tap to Select. When you select some items, then have to do something else with them (like selecting a bunch of objects for purchase, then tapping Pay).

Slide to Scroll.

Slide and Hold for Continuous Scroll.

Flick to Nudge.

Fling to Scroll.

Pinch to Shrink (aside from iPhone)

Spread to Enlarge (aside from iPhone)

Wave to Activate

Tilt to Move

Shake to Change State

Step to Activate

Rotate to Change State

Clap On, Clap Off

Flip to Change State

Move Body to Register Activity

Email me at dan [at] odannyboy [.] com with any suggestions. Thanks!

Even though One Laptop Per Child seems to be having some serious business and political issues, apparently it hasn’t stopped them from thinking about future products. Dubbed XO-2, it is scheduled to come out in 2010.

From Laptop Magazine:

Negroponte didn’t share many details about the XO-2’s hardware, but the new system has two touch-sensitive displays. As you can see from the video and the pictures, the XO-2 will be much smaller than the original machine (half the size, according to the press release) and will have a foldable e-book form factor. “The next generation laptop should be a book,” Negroponte said.

The XO-2 will employ the dual indoor-and-sunlight displays, which was pioneered by former OLPC CTO Mary Lou Jepsen. The design will provide a right and left page in vertical format, a hinged laptop in horizontal format, and a flat, two-screen continuous surface for use in tablet mode. “Younger children will be able to use simple keyboards to get going, and older children will be able to switch between keyboards customized for applications as well as for multiple languages,” the press release reads.

Let’s hope the UI is also revised and greatly modified for touchscreen. The current UI, “Sugar” has some issues.

Via Gizmodo.

There has been a lot of buzz lately about the holographic 3D modeling in the movie Iron Man. It’s not that far in the future, really, as Sketch Furniture shows. If they had a holographic projector, they could see what they were sketching (like we do in the video).

Technology Review article on Cubit, a $500 dollar multitouch MS Surface-like kit. (Surface is supposed to sell for about $10,000.)

Addie Wagenknecht, a fellow at Eyebeam, designed Cubit in an attempt to “demystify multitouch.” She and her collaborator Stefan Hechenberger “wanted to prove that anyone could build [a multitouch table] if they had a few simple things,” she says. In addition to making Cubit software available online, Wagenknecht is selling various do-it-yourself kits that include parts and instructions, aimed at people with a range of engineering skills. Putting together a personal multitouch table could cost anywhere from $500 to $1,000, depending on the type of hardware used, Wagenknecht says.

Gestural remote control designed for the kitchen (where you might have messy hands) by student Joris Van Gelder for Bang & Olufsen. The hole in the middle of the device is an interesting twist.

Loving the ghost hand in the video.

I’m looking for interesting examples of documentation around touchscreens or interactive environments for inclusion into the “Documenting Interactive Gestures” chapter. I’d love it if you could contribute!

I’m looking for:

• wireframes
• task flows
• storyboards
• animation or movie stills

Email me a dan -at- odannyboy -dot- com if you have a sample you (and your company/client) can share and could be published.

Cnet’s Crave reports that Kazuhiro Taniguchi, a researcher in Osaka University’s Graduate School of Engineering, has developed a device called the KomeKami Switch (Temple Switch) that allows users to control their iPod music player via eye winks. “The KomeKami Switch can be clipped to eyeglasses or headphones and will respond to various combinations of winks by remotely controlling play, pause, replay, and skip functions of the iPod. The gadget uses infrared sensors and a microcomputer to detect differences in the movement of your skin when you wink.”

T-Mobile unveiled this transparent (!) wall interface at their CeBit 2008 booth a few days ago. Brief Wired article on it:

So how did the companies keep everyone’s attention? By letting people play with touchscreens, and believe it, nothing is hotter right now than touchscreens. In the T-Mobile area, an extended Media Wall was placed in the middle of the space, but the most interesting part about it was its transparency, which we haven’t seen before. We’re not sure if this was a Han Wall or not, but it seemed to work as a good advertising model.