In case you missed this: Microsoft Releases Kinect SDK Beta for PC

Kinect for Windows SDK Beta!   IT IS TRUE!!!!!


My Kinect and PC are waiting for my summer project.    What a great opportunity to "practice" programming over my 5 week summer break..... I already know C#, and I've done a little game programming (ie. AI for Game Development - using XNA Game Studio Express- it has been a while).  

-Photo credit: Microsoft Research


I have some cool ideas for basic games that might be good for the students I work with who have autism spectrum disorders... and some ideas that might be fun for my grand-baby.  I can't wait to have time to code again!   


Here's some info from the Microsoft Kinect for Windows SDK Beta website:


"The Kinect for Windows SDK beta is a programming toolkit for application developers. It enables the academic and enthusiast communities easy access to the capabilities offered by the Microsoft Kinect device connected to computers running the Windows 7 operating system."


"The Kinect for Windows SDK beta includes drivers, rich APIs for raw sensor streams and human motion tracking, installation documents, and resource materials. It provides Kinect capabilities to developers who build applications with C++, C#, or Visual Basic by using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010."


This SDK includes the following features:


Raw sensor streams
Access to raw data streams from the depth sensor, color camera sensor, and four-element microphone array enables developers to build upon the low-level streams that are generated by the Kinect sensor.
Skeletal tracking
The capability to track the skeleton image of one or two people moving within the Kinect field of view make it easy to create gesture-driven applications.
Advanced audio capabilities
Audio processing capabilities include sophisticated acoustic noise suppression and echo cancellation, beam formation to identify the current sound source, and integration with the Windows speech recognition API.
Sample code and documentation
The SDK includes more than 100 pages of technical documentation. In addition to built-in help files, the documentation includes detailed walkthroughs for most samples provided with the SDK.
Easy installation
The SDK installs quickly, requires no complex configuration, and the complete installer size is less than 100 MB. Developers can get up and running in just a few minutes with a standard standalone Kinect sensor unit (widely available at retail outlets)."

RELATED
Microsoft Releases Kinect for Windows SDK Beta

Nicholas Kolakowski, Application Development News, 6/16/11

Why bother switching from GUI to NUI? - Asked and Answered by Josh Blake; My 2-cents; Stevie B’s Microsoft Research Video; Marco Silva’s NUI-HCI Presentation (and links)

In Chapter 1 of Natural User Interfaces in .NET,  Josh Blake asks and answers a question posed by many people who have been under the spell of keyboard input and GUI/ WIMP interaction: 


Why bother switching from GUI to NUI?  The answer?  Read Chapter 1 (pdf) of the book - the chapter is free.


Here are a few of my personal reasons:  
1.  I want to buy the next version of the iPad or something like it.
2.  I want to buy a new large-screen Internet HD TV.

3.  I want to buy a Kinect.

4.  I do NOT want to interact with my new TV with a Sony remote.  Too many tiny buttons!

5. I do NOT want to interact with my new TV with a keyboard,  because it reminds me of...work.

6.  Most importantly: 

I want to design apps for the people I care about, and others with similar needs:

    My mom.  

    My grandson.

Moms and dads with kids in tow.
People with special needs and/or health concerns, and the people who care and guide them.
Knowledge sharers and (life-long) learners....

RELATED

"Smart" Interactive Display Research

How Natural User Interfaces are changing Human Computer Interaction

 

View more presentations from Marco Silva

My YouTube Playlist:

Post-WIMP Explorers' Club Videos

"Natural user interfaces, gesture interaction, multi-touch, natural interaction, post WIMP examples and more... "

Interactive Multimedia Technology Post:
Interactive Touch-Screen Technology, Participatory Design, and "Getting It": Revisited

RELATED - and somewhat related   

Moms with Apps

Design for Care

SparkOn

NUI Group

UX Matters      "Why don't usability problems get fixed"

Encyclopedia:  Human Computer Interaction, Interaction Design, User Experience, Information Architecture, Usability and More (Interaction-Design.org)

Josh Blake's Blog: Deconstructing the NUI    Book: Chapter 1 (pdf)  Free!
Blake.NUI

"Blake.NUI is a collection of helpful controls, utilities, and samples useful for multi-touch and NUI development with WPF, Surface, and Silverlight."

OpenKinect Wiki

OpenKinect Community Founder Joshua Blake Comes Up With His Own Version of Win 7 Multitouch on Kinect   (Madhav K, KinectHacks 1/14/11)

Kinect SDK Could Open New Worlds for Motion-Controlled Interfaces (Mike Martin, TechNews World, 2/22/11)

Seth Sandler

Seth Sandler's Blog

Seth Sandler's  Ultimate List of Interactive Tables

Dan Saffer

Bill Buxton

Johnny Chung Lee's Procrastineering Blog
Adam Greenfield's Speedbird Blog

 (This is not an inclusive list.)


GUI to NUI Post-WIMP Manifesto:  TBA

TellTable: Collaborative Creative Storytelling on a Multi-touch Table, from Microsoft Research, UK.

The TellTable is a collaborative digital storytelling application designed for Microsoft's Surface interactive multi-user multi-touch table. It was used by children in a school library in the UK, and was quite successful. The video below provides an overview about the way the TellTable worked. I think every school library/media center should have something like this!

"TellTable, a system developed in the Soci-Digital Systems group, uses Microsoft Surface technology to provide an interactive storytelling experience, similar to how children would tell stories using physical toys. Children can create various digital characters and sceneries on Surface, made out of photos taken of real world objects and environments as well as finger paintings. By manipulating these characters using multi-touch gestures, children can narrate, act and record imaginative stories together, before sharing them with friends later on.

TellTable was deployed in a primary school, and received overwhelmingly positive feedback. It has seen crowds of kids create stories featuring characters as diverse as Ninja chickens and rampaging teddy bears. Teachers were also enthusiastic about the potential of TellTable as an education tool, to help children develop communication skills and to create interactive tutorials when teaching foreign languages." -- Microsoft Research UK

Publications

Xiang Cao, Siân E. Lindley, John Helmes, Abigail Sellen. (2010). Telling the whole story: Anticipation, inspiration and reputation in a field deployment of TellTable. Proceedings of CSCW 2010, ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work. p. 251-260.

John Helmes, Xiang Cao, Siân E. Lindley, Abigail Sellen. (2009). Developing the story: Designing an interactive storytelling application. Proceedings of ITS 2009, ACM International Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces. p.49-52.

Pictionaire Multi-touch Collaborative Design Table from Microsoft Research (CSCW 2010) Found on Andy Wilson's Site

Pictionaire Table
(This looks like it is in the testing stage)


Link to video and information on Andy Wilson's website


Link to paper:
Pictionaire: Supporting Collaborative Design Work by Integrating Physical and Digital Artifacts (pdf)

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.

I want to play with mice! Microsoft's Multiple Multi-touch Mice Preview

Hot off the press from Microsoft's Applied Sciences Group at UIST 2009!
Mouse 2.0: Multi-touch Meets the Mouse

"In this paper we present novel input devices that combine the standard capabilities of a computer mouse with multi-touch sensing. Our goal is to enrich traditional pointer-based desktop interactions with touch and gestures. To chart the design space, we present five different multi-touch mouse implementations. Each explores a different touch sensing strategy, which leads to differing form-factors and hence interactive possibilities. In addition to the detailed description of hardware and software implementa-tions of our prototypes, we discuss the relative strengths, limitations and affordances of these novel input devices as informed by the results of a preliminary user study."

The following video is courtesy of Microsoft's Applied Sciences Group:



Music:  "Motion Blur", by Bjorn Hartman. (Bjorn is an HCI researcher and electronic musician.)

The researchers on the team: 
Nicolas Villar, Shahram Izadi, Dan Rosenfeld, Hrvoje Benko, John Helmes, Jonathan Westhues, Steve Hodges, Eyal Ofek, Alex Butler, Xiang Cao and Billy Chen


Here is a video preview/demo of the multi-touch mice prototypes from Microsoft's Applied Sciences Group Lab, courtesy of CrunchGear:

-CrunchGear

Link to video: Microsoft Research UK's multi-touch research team

"I think that the sort of grander vision is that 5 years to 10 years down the line, there will be lots of new displays and display technologies, and displays will become more ubiquitous and cheaper. What we're trying to do is actually explore what the interaction techniques might be on these displays, because not all of them will be connected to mice and keyboards." -Shahram Izadi, Microsoft Research UK


Direct link to the wmv file

"Inside MultiTouch: Team, Demo, Lab Tour"

Take a look at a post on the MSDN Channel 9 website about an interview of members of Microsoft Research UK's multi-touch team. The researchers on the video are Shahram Izadi, Alex Butler, and Steve Hodges. The video contains some interesting demos. This team's approach to multi-touch is different than approach taken by the Microsoft Surface team. This video is well worth the 30 minutes!

This technology would be great for interactive educational games and 3-D applications. Microsoft has plans for this technology to be used in the home and for shared applications.