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

A little off-topic: Slideshow of my cell phone camera effects experiments at Amelie's French Bakery, NoDa, Charlotte, NC.

I dropped my nephew off at the airport before the crack of dawn this morning, and took the opportunity to visit Amelie's French Bakery in the NoDa neighborhood of Charlotte (NC). The croissant was awesome and the coffee hit the spot. It occurred to me that I'd never checked out the camera effects features on my cellphone.

Below is a slideshow of my experiments - there are many pictures of the same "scene", with different effects. (The flash was on for some of the pictures, and off for others.)

Today I hooked up a Wii to the IWB in the school's therapy room. Next - a Kinect?! (Angels are welcome to help us expand the school's "games" programs for students with special needs)

Today, I hooked up our school's Wii to the newly-installed IWB in the therapy room for the first time, and used it during a session for for a social-skills activity with two students who have autism spectrum disorders.  The students helped each other to create their own "Mii" avatars.  I had them play the bowling game, and was impressed how this activity elicited social conversation between the students, with minimal effort on my part.

Most of students in the program at Wolfe are in grades 6-12. They have cognitive, language, and motor delays.  A good number of the students also have autism spectrum disorders. Some have multiple special needs.

We have found that when our students are provided with interactive activities displayed on the large screen of an IWB, they tend to increase their level of attention to their peers and also communicate more with one-another, as well as with the teachers and staff.

By using an IWB for games at school, we are extending the reach of how this technology can be used with students who have more complex special needs.   By providing a means  for our students to learn to play positive games, we help them develop important physical, social, and leisure skills that they can use outside the school setting with non-disabled peers and siblings.  My hunch is that the games will also help promote cognitive/problem solving skills, too.

NOTE:
The funds to purchase the Wii were donated to our school, but did not cover additional games or accessories. We'd like to purchase Rock Band and Wii Fit. We'd also like to expand our program and purchase an Xbox with a Kinect.   An iPad or two would be OK, too : )

If there are any angels out there who'd like to donate funds for our "games" program at Wolfe, please contact me through my Google profile. I will connect you with the appropriate person.

Game designer/developers/researchers/students:
If you are interested in volunteering your efforts to work on a basic cooperative, pro-social game for the Kinect, SMARTTable, or interactive whiteboard, please contact me.

NCSU D.H. Hill Library has a Perceptive Pixel Multitouch Display (updated)

NCSU 'sandbox' lets students touch the technology

Jay Price, Charlotte Observer, 2/22/11

"The Perceptive Pixel display wall, which was switched on this week, is the $100,000 centerpiece of the new Technology Sandbox at the D.H. Hill Library. The sandbox is a room of cutting-edge, interactive hardware that's aimed partly at familiarizing students with the latest high-tech hardware, particularly large displays and gesture-based computing. It was paid for with a federal grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services that is administered by the State Library of North Carolina."

Credit: Corey Lowenstein - clowenst@newsobserver.com

RELATED
Technology Sandbox introduces NCSU students to latest gadgets
WRAL Techwire, 8/25/10
New Learning Spaces for New Learning Styles (pdf)
Terry B. Hill, Mohan Ramaswamy,  NCSU

HUNT LIBRARY

North Carolina State University Libraries
Perceptive Pixel

Vision-Based Hand-Gesture Applications: Video from Communications of the ACM

The latest edition of Communications of the ACM, via "snail mail", was the inspiration for this post:

Vision-Based Hand-Gesture Applications
Juan Pablo Wachs, Mathias Kolsch, Helman Stern and Yael Edan

"Body posture and finger pointing are a natural modality for human-machine interaction, but first the system must know what it's seeing."


More to come!

Interactive Timeline "Wordle" for WikiLeaks: Explore the Cable Street Database, an Example of Interactive Journalism

What can a cloud of words tell us about foreign policy?:
"An interactive analysis of all the 250,000 documents in the so-called Cable Street database" -Aftenposten

http://www.aftenposten.no/spesial/cablegate/?lang=en

RELATED

Behind the scenes of Aftenposten's Wikileaks visualization

Tracy Boyer, Innovative Interactivity (II), 2/23/11

Eirick Wallem Fossan: Multimedia journalist and Flash developer for Aftenposten.

Comment:  I usually don't blog about political topics, but I felt that this interactive visualization was an effective method of helping the public understand the information/data shared through the Wikileaks process.  

My last post focused on the large multi-touch wall installed at a new library at North Carolina State University.  The library was designed for collaborative activities.  An interactive "Wordle" displayed on a multi-touch wall for students to explore with peers would probably be worth using!    

Public libraries, outfitted with collaborative displays, would also be great places for the people to explore all sorts of visualized data.