Mobile augmented reality

Layar is a free application on your mobile phone which shows what is around you by displaying real time digital information on top of reality through the camera of your mobile phone.

Sneak Preview at some UI trends

Sixth Sense:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html

Perspective Pixels:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA59CgXH7Ts

WiiMote Hack:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/johnny_lee_demos_wii_remote_hacks.html

Siftables:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/david_merrill_demos_siftables_the_smart_blocks.html

Touch free gesture control

California based Canesta is developing a camera that can see subjest in 3D and thereby track there position and gestures. This will allow for touch free gesture control.

This technology is likely to appear in TV's and Media PC's initially.

So now you can wave at your TV :)

Hitachi has already tied up with Canesta.

Audio UI

Apple announced the new iPod "small talk".

The iPod that can talk back.

Now that sound interesting from interaction design point of view. 

Anything apple always excites you first, doesn't it?

but then I got back into really thinking about it. 

What is it trying to tell me. 

When I read through the details, I found that the controls are integrated into the string of the earbud. Now thats not convenient. Ear buds usually last a few months. THen you would like to replace them. The earbuds with control might be costlier then the ones without controls.

Ofcourse there are good points as well. 4GB for USD 80 is a good price for such a device.

The introduction of the talk back feature really brings a DJ/RJ into the iPod. 

More interesting for me is that it prepares the mainstream users for the Audio UI. This might be just the begining to get voice controlled user interfaces into the mainstream products.

Interaction Design Guide for Touchscreen Applications

http://www.sapdesignguild.org/resources/TSDesignGL/Index.htm

Microsoft Vision-2019

Here is a visual representation of what Microsoft looks ahead in the future from user interface point of view:

Although a good vision, it lacks narrative. WIthout a commentary, these are just nice visuals to look at.

Its more on the side of an 'infomercial'. 

Touch screen text input

Recently there have been some interesting developments in the touch screen based text input technologies. Iterestingly, everyone is trying to solve the problem of faster text entry using touch screens. I agree that the current keypads for touch screen (especially small hand held devices) needs a new life. In this post, I am going to review a few interesting text input technologies.

SWYPE  uses continuous swipe of the stylus to write text quickly. It is designed by CliffKushler (creator of T9) and developed by Randy Marsden (developer of onscreen keyboard included in Windows).

It claims:

"With one continuous finger or stylus motion across the screen keyboard, the patented technology enables users to input words faster and easier than other data input methods—at over 50 words per minute…"

I wish the video was shot a little slower. Right now, I can not follow the stylus movement and its difficult to see how the words are written. If you notice carefully, you need to do a slight 'stutter' or 'quick move' over the letter if you want to type it twice, for example watch when he types "screens".

It looks a bit error prone, but if you look at this video from Cliff Kushler, I think its quiet robust.

On the other hand, Android Shapewriter does not require this 'stutter'. Notice when the word "innovative" is typed. It relies more on the dictionary model rather then only user defined words.

In both the cases, the user has to be quiet familiar with moving finger over 'qwerty' keyboard. This is different then typing words individually. If you use your finger then you may end up blocking the view of alphabets where you want to move next (with a stylus its a bit better). 

IBM has also touched upon this subject with its tool called SHARK Shorthand. This tool also tries to solve the Text entry issue of touch screen devices. Apart from the "qwerty" layout, it also has ATOKIM layout, Alphabatic layout and Gesture detections.