Category: research     Posted by: cornelius     Discuss: add comment

The guys at Elliptic Labs have finally managed to do what Zaphod Beeblebrox and Tom Cruise's character in Minority Report have attempted to do for a while: use a touchless, gesture-based, user interface that doesn't require sensors installed on the hand. According to the Elliptic Labs website, "the hardware is based on standard components only, similar to those in a mobile phone. The system can run on the CPU and power in most usual consumer electronic devices. It can be embedded into any electronic device, including hand held ones."

However, we've seen something similar to this before in the form of electrostatic UI's, which also happen to be touchless. However, Elliptic are the only ones that created sensor hardware that is based on standard components, and also used a form factor that is more portable and usable than our favourite Northwestern students.

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Category: research     Posted by: cornelius     Discuss: 1 comment

While innovation in the realm of portable (i.e. netbooks) and mobile user interfaces shifted towards speed, functionality and support for a variety of standards and hardware technologies, Intel's new version of its Linux-based netbook UI has truly taken a step forward in terms of usability and user experience.

What's different about Moblin 2.0 ? Well, it's a bit of a departure from the usual desktop paradigm as the UI is organized into elegant tabbed panels and application "zones" (think virtual desktops with improved UX). The home screen interface is also quite functional, showing the usual tasks list, calendar and application shortcuts, as wells as other integrated widgets (eg. Twitter). Quite a feast for the UX eyes.

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Category: research     Posted by: cornelius     Discuss: add comment

When dealing with the future of user interfaces, most people think in terms of multi-touch, interpretations of web 3.0, eye trackers, etc. And while it all may very well happen that way, there is also another palpable possibility, brain-controlled user interfaces (let's call them BUIs for the sake of this post).

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have managed to connect a monkey's primary motor cortex to a robot arm with astounding results (read the entire article and see the video here). Yet for some reason, this has received little attention from the UI/UX world and has been singled out as a purely medical breakthrough.

Let's face it, if a wireless solution can be implemented, we might very well be looking at the future of user interfaces.

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