“We’re using bodies evolved for hunting, gathering, and gratuitous violence for information- age tasks like word processing and spreadsheet tweaking.”
- David Liddle (as quoted in Tap is the New Click, a presentation by Dan Saffer)
Last week we had the pleasure of hosting Dan Saffer for his Tap is the New Click presentation.
Even though touchscreen and gestural technology has been around for decades, Nintendo’s Wii, Apple’s iPhone and Microsoft Surface have heralded a new era of interaction design where gestures in space and touches on a screen will be as prominent as pointing and clicking.
But how do you create products for this new paradigm? While most of us know how to design desktop and web applications, many are still wondering how to adequately design for interactive gestures. This talk covers the basics: ergonomics, a brief history of gestural technology, prototyping and documenting, and how to communicate the presence of a gestural interface to users.
It was an interesting presentation and great timing since we begin physical computing this week. His discussion on how to prototype these new interactions also tied in very well to our workshop at the time on video prototyping. Dan covered many things from simple rules such as this one:
Avoid putting essential features or information like a label below an interface element that can be touched, as it may become hidden by the user’s own hand.
And basic design tricks (that were new to me) like the use of “iceberg tips” and “adaptive targets”. His presentation also veered into other fields such as kinesiology and physiology.
Touchscreen and gestural interfaces are something I am very interested in exploring this year, and even more so after hearing Dan Speak (he called it an interaction design revolution!).
Some links:
Interactive Gestures: Designing Gestural Interfaces - A new book by Dan Saffer
Tap is the New Click - PDF version of Dan’s presentation
Post a Comment