Hard hard user interfaces.

-
Started as someone doing ActionScript in Macromedia Flash I got into Human-Computer-Interaction after watching Jeff's Hann's multi-touch work. That's the power of a really cool demo that inspired the birth of NUIGroup community which spawned 1000s of makers all around the world making their own projector camera multitouch systems. All of it became mainstream once Apple released the iPhone to the world, and also gave birth to my interest in human-centered engineering. I spent some 10 years after that playing with sensors, haptics, and gestural interfaces through multiple input modalities but nothing stuck as much as multi-touch did. Thanks to Apple's execution. Everyone's phone/tablet interaction is default multitouch. (unless you have a visual impairment). Primsense evolved into Kinect, then came Wiimote, Leap but nothing stuck.  for speech, it was Amazon's Alexa. Latest news , that its going to lose Amazon 10B.  Like I am writing this post through my keyboard a...
Post a Comment

Plans for the Mozilla Firefox Multitouch UX

-
I am quite interested in exploring the Multitouch scenario on Mozilla Firefox for my project under Felipe's and Gerv's mentorship. Working with Mozilla Team design team members( Alexander Limi) and mentors is turning out to be a great experience so far. I am learning a lot of new things. Browsing the web is a very distributed activity with a lot of interactions possible- my aim would be to design a minimalist interface, that is slick, fast, and non-obtrusive. Hence devoted past couple of weeks researching on the topic-and doing some user study with Natural User Interface Group members.

Browsing through guidelines and advice by Dan Saffer in his book "Designing Gestural Interfaces" 
was an eye opener. I'll be using the book as a ready reference before writing code portions.


- Setup Mercurial(hg) repo at Google-Code at a mirror at BitBucket
- Wrote the extension skeleton: Sidebars etc.
- Recompiled Fx on Ubuntu and Win
- Checked out Fennec's and iPad Safari interactions using simulators
- User study with NUIGroup members
- Planning UI in context with three primary tasks: Tabs Placement and behaviour, Natural Gestures library for common tasks etc.


The overall discussion with community proved fruitful deriving to a conclusion- most applications/tools that are designed for Horizontal table-top systems might not be a perfect fit on vertical Multitouch systems. Since the tablets' era is coming: iPad, HP Slate, NotionInk Adam etc. we've to keep a couple of other things at the back of our mind while designing applications- Imprecise positioning, possible problems with eye parallaxis (with pen, too), the finger may be too large for accurate pointing with small objects. Hand movements (if used with keyboard). etc. etc.
In next update I'll be sharing some diagrams and code samples, right here.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NZM-SEC Superfast express that took my '35 hours'

-
Image
I usually cover my long distance travels by air- for it saves time, and is less tiring (and was affordable in the past).  Call it naivety or my callous attitude, but I completely forgot the fact that its hard to fetch a cheap ticket when your travel plans are made just a day in advance. Owing to recent price inflations and my last minute plans I decided to cover my return journey from Delhi to Hyderabad via train. The decision was taken a day before I wanted to return, i.e. 19th May, high time when there are summer holidays in India. The night before I stood in the train line, with my father and brother, to fetch tatkal tickets. The process is hard- the HTTP fetch request by IRCTC works like a lucky draw). Hence, my attempt ended up futile.  So I decided I'll jump on the train, painful decision-no tickets, no seats, just that. The beginning. I left my home at 7PM. Reached Kshitij's place. Had dinner there- met Surbhi, Sonia aunty and uncle there. Kshitij's mo...
Read more

Ideas

-
Image
Multiple ideas I was thinking about that could be used to improve people's lives- make new experiences happen, and tap into the unknown -- Sound Glasses. The user wears the glass and looks at a painting. A large painting. And the system gives audio feedback on the parts highlighted based on an audio command 'Tell me more'. Technology: Pre-calibrated system. Easy Or multiple paintings and it starts speaking about what you're looking at. Audio annotations. Leave specific audio snippets at places. ' User looks at certain objects 'drops' audio snippets' Later. Someone else could visit and listen to them. e.g. 'please clean this wall' 'this is Fluid interfaces demo area, find a student to help you out' 'This is where Media Lab started its first group' Audio post-its Inkharvester- presented as a hack(goes to indie inventors)- discussed with Harshit. http://penn.m...
Read more

discordant yet musical whistles

-
My house in Delhi has a guard that walks around and whistles all night to keep the thieves away. I am still amused by the fact how the entire street comes together and contributes and hires the guard, instead of complaining and waiting for the Govt. to solve their issues, which is slow as heck. Its like a citizen contributed and distributed parallel police with evolving protocol, when the systems don't work well. Atleast it keeps the societal interaction intact and neighbors talk, which i believe is a good thing- communities being vocal about their issues. writing this at 3AM while everyone sleeps and guard is awake. 
Read more