Two good articles by Bill Buxton: The Mad Dash Towards Touch Technology; The Long Nose of Innovation

I came a couple of interesting links to a couple of articles from the Putting People First blog. The links are articles written by Microsoft Research principal scientist, Bill Buxton.  If you've never heard of Bill Buxton, he's the guy that was doing multi-touch research way back in the 1980's. 

The Mad Dash Toward Touch Technology
Bill Buxton, Business Week, 10/21/09
"True innovators need to know as much about when, why, and how not to use trendy technology as when to use i."

The Long Nose of Innovation
Bill Buxton,  Business Week, 1/2/08
"The bulk of innovation is low-amplitude and takes place over a long period. Companies should focus on refining existing technologies as much as on creation." 

RELATED
Updated!

Multi-Touch Systems that I Have Known and Loved
(Bill Buxton)


I came across Bill Buxton's Multi-Touch website in early 2007 when I was taking HCI and Ubicomp.  I was searching for information about large touch-screen displays and applications for a couple of class projects.  The website was the answer to my graduate student prayers.  On the site, you'll find a fantastic overview of the history of "multi-touch", including gesture recognition and related surface technologies. 

The website has interesting links.  If you have the time, take a look at Buxton's main websitehttp://www.billbuxton.com/. You'll find loads of interesting links. I especially like the links to his Business Week articles.



Bill Buxton is the author of "Sketching User Experiences:  Getting the design right and the right design", a book that I own and recommend.

The WSN-Bar: Ambient Intelligence + Wireless Sensor Network + Interactive Touch Technology + Art

AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE + WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK + INTERACTIVE TOUCH TECHNOLOGY + ART


Graduate students at the Center for Art and Technology -Taipei National University of the Arts,created a interactive touch creation, called the WSN-BAR, based on the concept of ambient intelligence, utilizing a wireless sensor network and vision-based tracking technologies. The video below demonstrates two modules, the Garden of Light, and Vivacious Bushes.

According to information from the WSN-Bar website, the installation detects the changes in the brightness of the environment, temperature, the C02 density of the outdoor air, and the movement of people within a building. This technology works in harmony to support the artistic focus of the WSN-BAR. It provides a means of looking at environmental factors and the relationships between humans and nature, in an innovative way. 

WSB-Bar


The WSN-Bar was created by Jiun-Shian Lin, SuChuHsu, and Ying-Chung Chen. The artwork was by Chiung-Fang Tsao, Chia-Wen Chen, Yu-Hsiung Huang and Yi-Wei Chia.  I'm not sure who created the relaxing ambient background music in the video.


 
 -Interactive WSN-Bar


Wireless Sensor Networks:  a building block for Mass Creativy and Learning (pdf)
(To appear in the Proceedings of ACM Creativity & Cognition 2009 - Understanding the Creative Conversation)

Thanks to Kevin O'Mahony for the link!

RELATED
ACM Creativity & Cognition 2009
Everyday Creativy: Shared Languages & Collective Action
Octobmer 27-30 2009
Berkeley Art Museum & UC Berkeley

 

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi Professor of Psychology & Management
Claremont Graduate University [California, USA]

JoAnn Kuchera-Morin Director, Allosphere Research Laboratory
Nanosystems Institute [California, USA]

Jane Prophet Professor of Interdisciplinary Computing
Goldsmiths University of London [London, UK]

Thomas Hansen's Multi-Touch Wisdom: "Windows Touch vs PyMT - Why programming on Windows is too complicated!"

If you are interested in designing or programming multi-touch programs and like elegant, concise code, you'll appreciate Thomas Hansen's recent blog post:


Windows Touch vs PyMT:  Why multi-touch programming on Windows is too complicated!


Here is an excerpt from Thomas Hansen's blog post:


"If you read the rest of the blog post, I’ll show you what I mean about context, and why e.g.  Windows Touch makes life difficult if you want to program multi-touch.  I’ll show you how to rewrite a windows touch example project (5 C# source files and > 400 lines of code) in Python using PyMT (1 source file with 12 lines of code).  Yes 12 lines, you read correctly (and then there is the whole thing about it just running on Linux or OSX as well…but we’ll leave that for another blog post)."


At the end of his post, Thomas makes a comment that I think is worth considering:


"The interaction paradigm is so revolutionary, I think we need to adopt our development tools more to it and explore the interaction space.  Instead I think people are jumping the gun on trying to standardize the interface while using the development paradigms we used for the GUI."


Well said!


Thomas Hanson is a member of the NUI Group.  He is a graduate student at the University of Iowa, pursuing his PhD in Computer Science, specifically Human Computer Interaction.  

Chris O'Shea's Hand from Above Interactive Screen; Info about Interactive Architecture

A recent post on the Interactive Architecture blog was of artist Chris O'Shea's "Hand from Above" project, a joint co-commission between FACT (Foundation for Art & Creative Technology), Liverpool City Council for BBC Big Screen Liverpool, and the Live Sites Network.  The installation premiered during the Abandon Normal Devices Festival.


Hand from Above from Chris O'Shea on Vimeo. (Written using openFrameworks & openCV. Sounds by Owen Lloyd.)

"Just imagine walking through your town or city centre, watching yourself on the Big Screen, when all of a sudden a giant finger appears and starts to play with you!...Hand From Above encourages us to question our normal routine when we often find ourselves rushing from one destination to another. Inspired by Land of the Giants and Goliath, we are reminded of mythical stories by mischievously unleashing a giant hand from the BBC Big Screen. Passers by will be playfully transformed. What if humans weren’t on top of the food chain? Unsuspecting pedestrians will be tickled, stretched, flicked or removed entirely in real-time by a giant deity"

For more information about Interactive Architecture and related topics read the following post:


Interactive Architecture and Transdisciplinary Convergence...
(The World Is My Interface blog)

Techies: How to do Multitouch with Windows Presentation Foundation 4 using Visual Studio 2010

Here is the "how-to" video. I don't have WPF4 or VS2010, so I haven't tried this at home...yet.



I came across this video on Vinod Varma's Software Engineer's blog post, "Multi-touch programming getting simpler."


I'm sure I'm not alone in my present dilemma. I have a burning desire to experiment with multi-touch and Adobe's products, since I used to use Macromedia Studio quite a bit several years ago. Instead of learning ActionScript 3.0, I decided to learn C# and XNA Game Studio, and then went on to play with Windows Presentation Foundation, Expression Blend, and Silverlight.


And what about multi-touch web applications?!

Interactive micro-projectors for everyday life, from Light Blue Optics

LIGHT BLUE OPTICS: INTERACTIVE MICROPROJECTORS IN YOUR DAY-TO-DAY LIFE   -(The World Is My Interface blog)