UI design

A few days ago I had a TED.com marathon, and among others I came across this amazing talk about growing new organs, and this video about interface design –

It got me thinking about interaction design. Microsoft’s XboxKinect is a topical example of this. Kinect allows the user to interact using their whole body as the ‘remote’ or ‘hardware’. Reviews (in particular one from the guys at BBC Click!) say that the processes aren’t very accurate, and there is a slight delay between input and output. Even with the iPhone/iPad and similar devices, because the cursor is replaced with a finger or two, buttons are huge and infrequent, meaning there’s less option for control of the device. As these devices are becoming more popular for many of the tasks we use laptops and desktop computers for, accuracy, and hand (and body) anthropology is one of the features we must focus on more in interface design. The physical interaction (essentially the input of data) appears to be more organic, like our everyday interaction with real life objects, but I feel what is missing in these current products is accuracy, and strangely enough, the diminishing of overall control as well as the option to multi-task. I don’t know why but I’m finding it really hard to explain this, so bear with me if this last paragraph didn’t make any sense!

I found this video about an innovative new way of typing on smartphones, thanks to Marcus Leis Allion. Whether it will catch on or not depends I suppose on mass implementation. Reinvention of the QWERTY keyboard –

I’d like to research OS/UI design further and maybe create some of my own. I’ve definitely been inspired by 8pen.

Speaking of Kinect, Hector Martin, a Linux enthusiast, managed to hack Kinect and run it on his laptop within 3 hours of the European launch. After releasing the drivers as open source, fellow hackers/programmers have been playing around and creating some pretty interesting things without the need for an actual Xbox –

P.s. in case you haven’t noticed I just added an RSS button to the blog!