"Companies are in constant pursuit of building simple and usable products. More features, new technologies, and advanced capabilities but still in a lightweight and simple to use format. More often than not, making it simple is the hardest thing there can be."
Tables, counters and whiteboards will eventually become displays. Meeting rooms will have touch panels, and chalk boards will be replaced by large systems that have digital images and documents on a display that teachers can mark up with a stylus.
"Hands do two things. They are two utterly amazing things, and you rely on them every moment of the day, and most Future Interaction Concepts completely ignore both of them.
Hands feel things, and hands manipulate things."
"A group of students at the Royal College of Art in London have created two masks that can give you superhuman sight and hearing.
The first prototype covers the wearer's ears, mouth and nose and uses a directional microphone to give him the ability to hear an isolated sound in a noisy environment. For example, you could target a person in a crowd and clearly hear his words without the surrounding noise."
Creating a workable Minority Report-like screen isn't very hard but what about an entire room or building that responds to touch, voice, and movement? Now that's hard. That, however, is the goal of OpenArch, a project by designer Ion Cuervas-Mons that uses projectors, motion sensors, and light to create interactive spaces.
"The "D.C. Disloyalty Card" is a rewards card that offers customers a free drink once they've patronized all six of the area's participating independently owned coffee shops, each of which operates with an eye to ethically sourced goods. "
"A wristband dubbed Nymi confirms a user's identity via electrocardiogram (ECG) sensors that monitor the heartbeat and can authenticate a range of devices, from iPads to cars. Developers at Bionym, the Toronto-based company that makes the device, say the peeks and valleys of an individual's heartbeat are harder to imitate than the external features of biometric systems, like fingerprints or facial recognition."
when I carry my tablet I don't do all that much reading. Instead, I check my email, check Facebook, check Twitter, or-perhaps worst of all-play Words with Friends.
"The Virtuix Omni™ is the first virtual reality interface for moving freely and naturally in your favorite game.
The Virtuix Omni™ takes virtual reality to the next level- allowing anyone to stand up and traverse virtual worlds with the natural use of their own feet. Moving naturally in virtual reality creates an unprecedented sense of immersion that cannot be experienced sitting down.
Applications of natural movement in virtual reality stretch far beyond gaming: training and simulation, fitness, virtual tourism, virtual tradeshows and events, meet-ups and multi-person adventures, virtual workplaces, museums, VR architecture, VR concerts… The possibilities are limitless."
"As online content continues to be increasingly consumed through mobile platforms, it's no wonder we're seeing new formats to deliver information more quickly and fluidly. In the past, we've seen Wibbitz present any news story as a visual and dynamic infographic instead of plain old text. But now Spritz believes that humans can read much faster using its system of 'streaming' text at up to 600 words per minute."
The border between our physical world and the digital information surrounding us has been getting thinner and thinner. Designer and engineer Jinha Lee wants to dissolve it altogether. As he demonstrates in this short, gasp-inducing talk, his ideas include a pen that penetrates into a screen to draw 3D models and SpaceTop, a computer desktop prototype that lets you reach through the screen to manipulate digital objects.
"What we're really trying to do is enable a new kind of interaction with Google where it's more like how you interact with a normal person," says Huffman. To illustrate, he picks up his smartphone and says "How far is it from here to Hearst Castle?"
Researchers at the University of Washington, Rajesh Rao and Andrea Stocco, have created a remote, non-invasive brain-to-brain interface that allowed Rao to move Stocco's finger remotely on a keyboard using his thoughts.
"The Internet was a way to connect computers, and now it can be a way to connect brains,"
Imagine that psychologists are scanning a patients' brain, for some basic research purpose. As they do so, they stumble across a fleeting thought that their equipment is able to decode: The patient has committed a murder, or is thinking of committing one soon. What would the researchers be obliged to do with that information?
The Starboard was the first bar in the U.S. to buy a pair of urinals outfitted with a new hands-free video game system that allows men to control a cartoon character on a television screen with their, um, urine stream.