Multitouch is all the craze these days and it is becoming more commercially available with products such as the HTC Touch Diamond, Microsoft Surface and the iPhone. Since multitouch allows for direct manipulation and gesture recognition, it opens up the opportunity for designers to explore new interfaces that are natural and intuitive for users. A classic example is the zoom gesture that has become a table-stake in multitouch experiences; i.e., zooming in and out using two corner touch points that move in opposite directions on a photo or a map, for example.
With this in mind, us Artefactians set out to join the do-it-yourself craze to investigate ways to build our own multitouch table on the cheap that we can use as a testing platform for multitouch experiments. Our goal was to build a table as quickly and cheaply as possible that would recognize multiple fingers and blobs simultaneously so we can get started with our investigations.
Products like the iPhone and Microsoft’s Surface are changing the way we think about computing by allowing direct interaction through touch that feels physical and natural. At the same time, products such as Nintendo’s Wii remote, inexpensive sensors and easily obtainable microcontrollers are allowing us to take these new gestural metaphors into physical space. This has inspired us to begin investigating seamless interaction between us and gesture interfaces.
The following experiments focus on scaling touch and gesture interactions into human-scale experiences. We are exploring the body as navigation, physical gesturing, and alternative sources of inputs and outputs that feel natural.
