Nov 25, 2007
Microsoft Surface - OMG
Steve pointed me over to this tonight and I am amazed.
I feel like I have become a bit of a Microsoft evangelist of late, but my recent discoveries of their products have blown me away.
Check the screen shot out and look at the online demo.
I saw this a while back looks like a nice idea although prohibitively expensive for the time being. There are two main technology ideas here - sensing compatible devices when ther are placed on the surface and multi-touch screen interactions.
The iPhone would appear to be the first mass-appeal multi-touch screen device although it only allows two touch points. Jeff Han’s work is some of the nicest that I’ve seen (http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/).
The future certainly looks touchy-feely.
I had heard that Mototorola were putting lots of money into creating feedback with touch-sensitive devices (i.e. there was a small pulse that indicated your choice of button).
The new LG Viewty seem to have a graphical representation of the effect, but without the feedback.
Paul
As if by magic, this appeared in my Feed Reader:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/11/26/monday-inspiration-user-experience-of-the-future/
Paul - as I’m sure you’ll find out soon the Viewty does have feedback with the touch screen. It’s called Haptic feedback. I hope you enjoy it!