This is a company I've been meaning to write about! Here is the plug from the IntuiLab website:
"Founded in 2002 and headquartered in Toulouse, France, IntuiLab is a leader in the design and development of surface computing-based applications. Through IntuiFace, the company’s portable, scalable and extensible software surface computing platform, IntuiLab delivers and deploys applications that bring tangible returns on investment to its clients by providing their customers and users with a more natural, immersive and memorable interactive experience. IntuiLab is a Microsoft and Adobe partner and has clients in a wide variety of industries such as retail, food and health, banking, aerospace and defense, telecoms and hospitality."
"We are able to deliver such benefits to our customers thanks to a unique blend of skills (our multidisciplinary IntuiTeam), technology (the IntuiFace Surface Computing Software Platform), process (the IntuiSign design process) and a wide range of partners."
Amazon Multi-touch Clinet on the IntuiFace Platform
"This video shows an example of how to access to an online retail catalogue (such as Amazon) from a Surface Computer rich client, and create, browse and merge lists of queried or selected items in a natural way." -Intuilabs
Multi-user Web Browsing on a Windows 7-based 19" 3M Multi-touch
Pictures from the Intuilab website:
If you take a look at Intuilab's "the team" page, you'll find that they look like...graduate students! They probably are, or were, given the size of list of published papers. This tells me that they must have their heart, mind, and souls poured into the business!
According to Priya Ganapati's recent article in WIRED, only 3% of all PC's and notebooks have interactive touchscreens. More are coming to market, such as Sony's Vaio L Touch HD PC, Dell's all-in-one, and Lenovo's tablet PC and ThinkPad laptop. HP came out with the TouchSmart PC and touch-enabled laptops, and will be adding updated versions soon.
This is a great opportunity for developers interested in touch, multi-touch, and gesture interaction applications. I think there will be even more opportunity for web developers to create websites that are touch-enabled, or at least optimized for touch screen interaction.
Will the multi-touch web might be right around the corner?
At the moment, there is some confusion about what designers should consider when developing applications. There is not standard system of touch or gesture interaction, and researchers are still very busy figuring things out. Some companies have rushed out and patented gestures, which in my opinion, is like patenting how we breath. But that is another story.
If you are a designer or developer, you might be interested in the Touch First Microsoft Surface Developer Challenge. It is a chance to win your very own Microsoft Surface! Hurry, the deadline is October 12th.
If you are curious and would like to dig deeper into this topic, take some time to look at some of my blog-posts about multi-touch, touch screen news, innovations, and related musings:
In this article, Herkko Hietanen, a researcher at Helsinki Institute of Information Technology, is interviewed about his thoughts about the future of TV. He observes that "TV is broken" and thinks that "social television" is a concept that needs to be seriously addressed. "Herkko ends with the observation that social television isn’t a new concept. We’ve seen lots of experimentation with split screens, which allow chat alongside live broadcast. “But television is a lean-back experience,” Herkko offers – you don’t want to share screen estate with your friends. Instead, he believes that social interactions will be before and after the show."
So what's happening now? I'm not sure if the people on the technology end of the interactive/social TV scene have thought very deeply about how this will play out in our homes and social networks. Right now, the only way I can access the Interactive TV channel my satellite carrier is through the user-unfriendly remote, which looks something like this.
My experience with the interactive TV channel on DISH Network has been frustrating. Why should I be forced to use a complicated remote-control system to interact with content? Why should I be forced to experience a poorly-designed navigation system? It is common knowledge that remote control systems are poorly designed, despite the fact that companies such a EchoStar have been involved with interactive TV for at least a decade now.
What puzzles me is that things have not evolved very much, at least in terms of TV and interaction design. Here is an example -the following picture is a screen shot from a recent promo video about Playin' TV, an interactive TV offering that is the result of a collaboration between Dish Network and Echostar. From what I can gather from the video, the only way to play the games through the user-unfriendly remote control!
Interactive TV innovations from DISH Network: Playin'TV- Dish Network-Echostar- Promo October 2009 - Play Games on your TV!
(A list of games available for Dish Network subscribers can be found on the DishGames website.)
"Expert in casual gaming, Visiware is the world-leading provider of games for pay television. Its game channels are carried on more than 30 cable, satellite and IPTV networks and reach more than 120 million people within 77 countries."
Visiware is behind Playin'TV, Playin' Casino, MiniKids TV, and Playin'Star. Playin'TV games now available on Internet connected televisions. There must be a better way. Why not control the games with a Wiimote or iPhone? Visiware might be working on some changes, from the information on their User Interface and Design web page: "It’s time for your New Generation Interface Design : Consumers expect innovative yet simple interfaces Compelling, intuitive U.I. is the key to success (Iphone, WII…)"
Digging Deeper In the video clip below Bill Leszinske, GM, from Intel Digital Home, discusses the future of interactive television. Consumers want to take their television experience and augment it with the internet experience. Bill outlines the different ways this can happen:
Internet access is built into the television.
The internet can be accessed through the a set-box from a cable or satellite TV carrier
Interactive internet access can be built into a Blu-Ray box or gaming system
The technology will support 3D games and social networking.
Consumers want to take their TV experience and augment it with an internet experience. Intel's Next Generation TV: Social Networking, 3D TV
How will technology support this convergence?
The following articles provide an overview of Intel's chip technology, previously known as "Sodaville", called SoC, System on a Chip: Intel Unveils "Sodaville" Chip for TV Set-Top Boxes (Mark Hachman, PCMag, 9/24/09)
"But putting PC on a TV doesn't work; we know, we tried it," Kim said. "People want an immersive TV experience on their television." People want the power of the Internet on a TV, but they want it "simple," Kim said...What's needed is a pure Internet development framework, Kim said – and the most popular version of that is Adobe's Flash technology. David Wadhwani, general manager of the platform business unit at Adobe, said that the company has opened Flash and removed all license fees, requiring only that manufacturers to open the platform to third-party developers, as part of the Open Screen initiative.
Wadhwani demoed Flash 10 running on an Intel processor, showing full-screen Flash browsing, not to a Web site, but to a custom screen designed by Disney."
"The Sodaville processor uses an Atom core, and Intel has brought "Moore's Law" to shrink the processor to 45 nanometer technology. The Atom Processor CE4100, as it will be formally called, includes a 1080p video engine not to just decompress streams, but also recorded content supplied from another source, such as a hard drive. Intel doubled the speed of its 2D/3D engine, and added support for MPEG-4. The chip uses either DDR-2 or DDR-3 memory."
Intel Technology, Processing Power Key to TV Revolution (Intel Developer Forum, 9/24/09) New Intel chips run Web apps on TV sets (Sodaville) (itbusiness.ca, 9/25/09)Podcast version In the following video, Intel's work in the area of 3D Internet is discussed: Intel Introduces the 3D Internet
Intel is also collaborating with Adobe to innovate mobile media production, which most likely lead to some interesting outcomes:
Adobe CS4 and the New Intel Core i7 Mobile "Rendering is blazing fast." Mobile rendering on the road...anywhere anytime editing...
In my opinion, there are many factors to consider when thinking about television as we know it, web-based TV, and interactive television. Technology exists that can support the convergence of the social web and interactive television, but the key players are coming from different directions and with different agendas. Television still is a "push" medium, and this concept appears to be embedded in the mindsets of people involved with commercial TV programming.
For example, if you watch an episode of your favorite TV show via a network website, you are forced to watch commercials all along the way. If you stop the show and resume it after a break, you might even see the SAME commercial again! This is annoying, just another example of the "push" mentality. In my mind, this is a form of banner ad and pop-up litter- or even contamination! Where is the seamless, engaging, innovative UX here? (There are some examples of progress, such as the ABC's FlashForward website.)
I'm a subscriber to DISH Network, which offers some interactive TV programming. I went to the DISH Network website to find out more about it, and this is what assaulted my vision:
The website design looks pretty pushy to me. Does this foreshadow the future of Interactive TV?
Here's a screenshot of another DISH Network website:
From this web page you can link to the following web pages: DISH Remote Access: Sling "Your Browser, Your TV" - links to product overviews: Slingbox: "Watch your TV anywhere" SlingPlayer Mobile: "Extend your Slingbox experience to a mobile phone" SlingCatcher: " Extend your Slingbox Experience to a TV" Accessories: "Make your Sling Experience Complete"
An excerpt from Sling's promotional information: "Founded in 2004, Sling Media, Inc. is a different kind of consumer electronics company - one that's working to demystify convergence technologies and to create empowering experiences for the digital media consumer. The focus of Sling Media is to embrace - not replace - existing products and standards by enhancing them with hardware and software that make divergent technologies compatible and greatly improve the consumer experience. Because, after all, can't we all just get along?! "
"Sling Media, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of EchoStar Corporation (NASDAQ: SATS), is a leading digital lifestyle company offering consumer services and products that are a natural extension of today's digital way-of-life. Sling Media's product family includes the internationally acclaimed, Emmy award-winning Slingbox that allows consumers to watch and control their living room television shows at any time, from any location, using PCs, Macs, PDAs and smartphones and the revolutionary new SlingCatcher, a universal media player that seamlessly delivers broadcast TV, Internet video and personal content to the TV. Sling Media is also the company behind the video entertainment web site, Sling.com, offering consumers a wide variety of popular TV shows, movies and other entertainment free for viewing online or on the TV using SlingCatcher."
At any rate, here is a smattering of related articles and video-clips related to the future of TV that I'm presently contemplating: Interactive TV Today: "InteractiveTV Today [itvt] is the most widely read and trusted news source on the rapidly emerging medium of multiplatform, broadband interactive television (ITV)" TV's Killer App? Guess What, It May Be An App Joe Mandese, Media Daily News 10/2/09
Ensequence Video games, Interactive TV, and Cheats
Wacom Tablets Get Multi-Touch, Gestures (Charlie Sorrel, Wired, 9/24/09) "For the tech-curious, the new tablets have 512 pressure levels in the pen tip and the active area of the tablet is 5.8 x 3.6 inches, and all lose the in-pack mouse (for obvious reasons). The Touch and the Pen models are both $70, and the Pen & Touch is $100. Also, if you were thinking of buying Photoshop Elements 7 for the same price, get a tablet instead — Elements comes in the box."
Official Wacom Video
"Bamboo Touch is new type of computer input device by Wacom that lets you navigate and perform commands like zoom, scroll, rotate and more with a series of simple finger taps and hand gestures. Bamboo Touch brings Multi-Touch capability to your Mac or PC"
Video from a Wacom user:
A nice alternative to a mouse. I'm going to get one for my laptop!
I couldn't find any video clips of PresTop's multi-touch interaction. From what I can tell, PresTop multi-touch screens will be using SnowFlake Suite from Natural User Interface Technogies AB.
How-to:SnowFlake Suite Flash multi-touch Interactable component (NUIversity)
Without a single line of code, you can do quite a bit with Snowflake Suite
"This video covers how to make a rotatable and scalable image. The beauty about this is, that we have developed a Flash mouse input simulator, so that there is no need for multi-touch hardware in order to develop your applications. Simply simulate multiple mouse inputs for multi-touch.This project is still in alpha phase and a download will become available with the next release of Snowflake Suite 1.7 for the NextWindow platform and camera based multi-touch solutions."
Below is a video of single-touch interaction for PresTop, from Omnivision:
PresTop PresTop offers interactive hardware and software solutions that can be used indoors as well as in outdoor environments.
THE WORLD IS MY INTERFACE is the new title of my Technology-Supported Human-World Interaction blog. The name was just too long!
The first post written under the new title has a variety of links about ubiquitous computing, off-the-desktop interaction design, use of technology in public spaces, and so forth. There are a few links to scholarly research and related projects, too.
The Touch Project is based in the Interaction Design department of the Oslow School of Architecture and Design in Norway. "Touch is a research project that investigates Near Field Communication (NFC), a technology that enables connections between mobile phones and physical things. We are developing applications and services that enable people to interact with everyday objects and situations through their mobile devices. Touch consists of an inter-disciplinary team involved in social and cultural enquiry, interaction/industrial design, rapid prototyping, software, testing and exhibitions." -
reTouch is part of the Touch project, and it " brings together hundreds of cross-cultural examples of social norms and values involving touch—all categorised according to actions related to touching. Using quotes from ethnographic accounts written between the late 1800s and the present, re/touch encourages designers and researchers to explore how touch is used by people to relate to one another and the worlds in which we live. Browse re/touch to create design briefs, refine interaction scenarios, devise game play, or otherwise think, make and do things touchrelated." -reTouch web info, Anne Galloway.
One of the members of the research team is Anne Galloway, a social researcher and the author of the purselipsquarejaw blog, which she recently resurrected after taking a year off from blogging.
Anne also contributes to the space and culture journal. I've followed Anne's writing for a while. Over the course of her Ph.D. studies, she has thought deeply about the intersections of technology, space, and culture, including cross-cultural meanings of touch.
Note: Nikolas Nova's Pasta and Vinegar blog is worth taking a look at if you are interested in design, UX, emerging technologies, pervasive/ubiquitous computing.
About Nikolas and his blog: "User Experience researcher at LIFTlab. My work is about studying how people use various technologies and turn them into insights, ideas, prototypes or recommendations to inform design and foresight.This blog is a selection of the material that I collect, especially in fields such as mobility, urban environments, digital entertainment and new interfaces. I am also part of the near future laboratory."
UPDATE: Video of Hard Rock Cafe's Memorabilia Multi-touch Wall
I came across the updated Hard Rock Cafe website and found that it provides an awesome interactive experience! Visitors can explore the extensive Memorabilia collection in detail. This site is almost ready for inclusion in my UX/Interactive Hall of Fame!
According an article posted on the Hospitality Technology website, ""Tech, Love, and Rock 'n' Roll, the website was built using Silverlight, and is part of an initiative to expand the reach of the Hard Rock Cafe's extensive memorabilia collection.
"It all started last year with what we call 'Memo 2.0,'" [for memorabilia 2.0] and the rollout of Microsoft's new Silverlight (www.silverlight.net) technology, explains Joe Tenczar, senior director of technology and CIO for Hard Rock International. Silverlight is a web application framework, similar in scope to Adobe flash, that lets companies build custom apps. Hard Rock partnered with its brand agency Duncan/Channon (www.duncanchannon.com) and software developer Vertigo (www.vertigo.com) to create a custom Silverlight application for www.hardrock.com."
Below is a video of the website when it was still under development, unveiled during a MIX08 keynote:
The website is a companion project that is part of a bigger vision that includes an 18-foot interactive multi-touch wall that mirrors the Memorabilia website. The article goes on to mention that the "Rock Wall can be used by one person to blow up a piece of memorabilia as large as the screen, or optimized for six different user experiences at one time, though the technology has been tested for responsiveness to hundreds of simultaneous touches. "Imagine seeing Bob Dylan's Harley at more than life size; big impact," says Tenczar....Rock Wall uses a single piece of Stewart projection glass, custom-made at the factory for Hard Rock, along with three Christie projectors, numerous lasers, and multiple IR cameras to create a unified projection and touch experience. "The graphics are driven by a Nvidia Quadro Plex and there are two other dedicated servers for localized content and physics. I have seen a lot of cool technology, but this still makes my jaw drop whenever I see it in person." And the technology is smart. "If I walk up to the screen, it will blow up where I am."
According to information from the Hard Rock Cafe's press release, the interactive wall was created by Obscura Digital, a company located in San Francisco, along with Technomedia Systems was also involved in this project. Here's a quote from the press release:
"We were excited to work with Hard Rock on this revolutionary project," said Obscura Digital CEO Patrick Connolly. "This is the longest, largest and most technologically sophisticated multi-touch wall we’ve built. It utilizes our newest Fireframe technology, and the result is the highest resolution, seamless multi-touch display we have ever seen. We are delivering a 6000 x 1000 pixel display, so that multiple users at a time can enjoy the vast Hard Rock Memorabilia collection in stunningly high resolution. With this display, customers can literally zoom so deep into the images, that things like a scratch on Buddy Holly's glasses can be seen 3 feet wide. The graphic quality of this system is something the public has never seen, and the impact on the customers is something they will not soon forget." Hard Rock Cafe Multi-Touch
In addition to the website and Rock Wall, booths at the Hard Rock Cafe provide customers with access to music videos from a video distribution server, or VDS, created by Coleman Technologies. Each booth's touch screen display terminal has its own computer, and this allows guest control over the music videos that are played at the cafe. Content from the memorabilia system can be explored by customers right from the booth, from what I understand.
Microsoft's Surface tables were installed in the cafe, running a custom application created by Vertigo. that allows customers to interact with a spinning globe to locate and explore other Hard Rock Cafe's around the world.
Memorabilia Website UX:
Unfortunately, I am not in Las Vegas, so I haven't had a chance to interact with the Hard Rock Cafe's Rock Wall or any of the Microsoft Surface installations, which are the centerpiece of this project.
Not to worry. The companion Hard Rock Cafe Memorabilia website, experienced from the comfort of my home on an HP TouchSmart PC, provides a great user experience, even thought it is not fully optimized for touch navigation.
One of the things that I like about the site is that it uses Microsoft's Deep Zoom feature. When you zoom in, you can explore each photo without sacrificing resolution, and explore everything in minute detail.
If you want to try your hand at touch navigation, you will be pleasantly surprised, even though you will have to rely on your mouse at times. To zoom in, tap the initial presentation screen, and use your fingertips to pan around. What you touch and release won't go flying about the screen, which is a good thing.
If you lightly tap an item of interest, you will get a translucent information box on the right side of the screen. The information box might include video clip of an interview with a musician, a story, and a means to share the experience through embedding a widget on your website or blog, posting a link, or emailing a link.
After poking around the site using Firefox, I switched to Internet Explorer, turned the zoom setting to 125%, and had no difficulty using my right index finger to navigate through the information box. (It was more difficult to do this using Firefox.)
The directions for traditional navigation are simple:
"Turn on, zoom in, zoom out. Use your mouse wheel to zoom in and out. You can also zoom in by clicking and zoom out by shift-clicking. To pan, click and drag."
Featured artists on the Memorabilia site include The Who, The Beatles, James Brown, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Guns N'Roses, Buddy Holly, Madonna, Motley Crue, Elvis Presley, Queen, and The Rolling Stones. You can sort the main presentation page by artist or year, and explore the collection by artist, type of item, genre of music, decade, and location.
This website provides an interactive, user-friendly means of exploring the history of rock music. (It would be cool if the site offered some form of interactive sound track.)
I'm impressed.
I embedded the widgets below from the Memorabilia site. I wasn't sure exactly what might turn up. The interactive widgets, created with Silverlight, went beyond my expectations. You can explore the content right from this post, if you have Silverlight installed:
I shot some HD video of my touch interaction of the website and will post the videos as soon as I can. For now, take a look at some of the screen shots:
Main portal:
Eric Clapton's Guitar and Backstory:
Screen shot of memorabilia sorted by type - instruments:
This picture was taken in the mountains of Norway, not too far from Flam and the nearby fjords with my digital camera. Peaceful.
I've been observing people of all ages using technology durng my trip, within the context of wayfinding, communication, usability, and user experience, and I'll be posting more when I return.
