That was fast!

Wasn't it not only a few months back that we first heard of multi touch technology, the iPhone and Jeff Han? I recently gave a lecture on touch technology at the University of Salzburg, Austria. I wanted to start my talk by going back to the roots. So I (image-)googled the word "touch" expecting to find images of mothers with babies or perhaps pornography. Instead my search returned pictures of devices equipped with touch technology - over 58,000,000.00 of them!! Has the word "touch" become synonomous with "touch technology"?

I am surprised how fast it trickled into the public conciousness, especially since touch technology only uses a small fraction of our actual sense of touch. The abilities to sense temperature, shape, degrees of softness, texture, pain or the position of your muscles and joints are not playing any part in touch technology so far. A slick surface provides little haptic feedback which for example makes typing difficult.

At this year's Cebit convention, T-Mobile had an multi-touch installation, that was part Minority Report, part Jeff Han Screen and part vertical MS Surface "wall". In this video people seem so bored with the content itself. In fact they are not dealing with the data at all. How long will it take for the novelty of scaling and turning objects to wear off? What kind of interesting public application could this offer?

Much To Do About Microsoft Surface

Microsoft's introduction of surface computing has caused a ruckus on the IxDa, which is the discussion board of the Interaction Design Association. There was a huge backlash on the product and I commented negatively as well. I was disappointed that already at the introduction of the product Microsoft had partnered with chain hotels and casinos to introduce the product to the public in the near future. It just shifted the focus from innovation toward selling the product. Many of the shown applications are lame like showing augmented information about the wine you are drinking right on the surface of the table...

On the other hand I really like the interaction with real objects. Using the table to share data between different devices. There is a lot of promise in that. I wonder if they could have solved the recognition problem with RFID tags instead of cameras. Cameras need distance, which makes the table bulky.

Ideas and innovation happens in synchronicity. All of a sudden a few people have the same ideas around the same time. Much of it has to do with technology moving to the next level opening up the doors for certain new ideas. 
This has happened for multi-touch. The iPhone made it popular and the time for multi touch computing is now. It's everywhere and we are going to see a lot more of it. Exciting times.

This is another example of multi-touch used for a collaboration instrument as shown at the Transmediale 2007 in Berlin



This is one of MS's cheesy ads for Surface:




http://www.microsoft.com/surface/
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/surfacecomputing/default.mspx

Apple's Patent for Back Side Multi Touch Interface

Just when I thought the iPhone's multi-touch-the-information was a breakthrough for a consumer product the next exciting interface appears at the horizon. Yesterday macdailynews.com reported that patents have been filed by Apple concerning their 6th G iPod. It looks like you can navigate the front face of the iPod with a touch panel located on the back side. Input and output will be on different sides of the iPod.

UPDATE 05-15-07: This post on Core77.com explains why a touch panel on the back is so smart: This way the user is no longer obscuring the very interface he/she is supposed to interact with...



The greatest innovation is often the timely implementation of a particular technology that often has been around for a while. This only happens after other technical hurdles, such as CPU speed, bandwidth or component size have been solved. The iPhone made me research multi-touch technology and I have written about it in previous posts. During my studies I discovered a touch table interface on youtube.com which utilizes the underside of the table for additional navigation as well.



Matthias Müller Prove recently reminded me of Alan Kay's famous quote: "The computer revolution hasn't happened yet". Physical computing finally makes it to the market place. Only the very best will catch our attention. Apple stock briefly climbed to an all time high yesterday again ....

The Emotional iPhone Experience

Mac owners always had a more emotional relationship to their machines. That it is a great accomplishment on the part of Apple's designers. I like looking at my MacBook Pro every day! Touching it, using it is a delight. To prove my gushiness isn't rare to find amoung Mac users I'd like you to take a look at this video by Jason Ponton, Editor of The MIT Technology Review. He explains what makes a beautiful machine and his enthusiasm is a great example for the kind of emotional bond I am talking about.



Cell phones are intimate machines. We carry them close to our bodies and use them primarily to communicate, they are connectors to the world around us. I have never built that emotional relationship with any of my cell phones ( I am on my 5th phone now) . The novelty of a new phone wears off after a couple of weeks. It becomes a mere tool I expect to work. Since its features a miserably integrated I don't bother to use them. I am still doing the same few things with my phone I have always done: calling, texting and entering data into the calendar and the address book. My personal feature wish list has not changed for years. I don't need more features just a few done the right way. Nothing but sad compromises so far....

I think the iPhone will create that emotional relationship.

Why?

The integration with my Mac will be perfect. The iPhone will behave like my computer. It will be its ultra portable extension.

It will feel great in my hand, the multi-touch interface will make it feel like a real extension of my body. I will be able to directly touch and manipulate the information!

The overall success of the iPhone may depend on how well it will integrate with the Windows machines. The exclusive provider deal with AT+T is also annoying. No matter how great the iPhone is, I will not change my current phone plan for it.

I guess...

Jeff Han at TED 2006

I've posted on multitouch technology before, but watching Jeff Han from the NYU Research Lab in NY talk about their research just adds another layer. The demo shows him manipulating data and objects with his hand and fingers using a variety of gestures. Rarely have I seen a more convincing way of Human Computer Interaction. It makes complete sense right away and makes you wish time would fly so we could all use machines like that.

Jeff Han: Multi-touch Screens - the steroid version

Started reading John Maeda's "The Laws of Simplicity" today. He keeps a blog lawsofsimplicity.com, that continuously develops the ideas further. A few clicks later I ended up on the Signal-vs-Noise blog and eventually saw this amazing video showing Jeff Han and Phil Davidson demonstrate how multi-touch screens “will change the way we work and play.” Examples include usage in image editing, web browsing, creating 3D animations, etc.

These guys were announcing on their site that they were up to some exciting things. One of my very first posts was about their work. This is the amazing development:



http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid271543545/bctid422563006

Jeff Han, NYU, Multi-touch Technology

Just must have hid underneath a rock for the last two weeks, if you haven't heard of Apple's new iPhone. What came as a surprise to me was the fact that multi-touch screens have been around for almost 20 years. Sitting there in laboratories...why hasn't anybody picked up on this technology?
Look at this: AWESOME!