I first stumbled across this about 6 months ago… Microsofts first commercial venture with tactile interfacing. Its come along way and is now looking rather polished and workable. Jump here to see its latest appearance with the Mr Microsoft himself on Americas ‘Today show’…
This sort of Tactile interface will become more common in the future with the evolution from fixed physical input devices such as Mice and Keyboards to more flexible and customisable interfaces. Microsofts surface venture seems to have a very natural and intuative input/output system. with user input being constantly assessed and recorded whilst output is adapted and changed ‘on the fly’ to relfect the users intentions. It would be fantastic to actually get hands on with this hardware and really see how intuative and ‘intelligient’ it is.
Another aspect of this form of HCI is how user friendly it (at the moment appears) to be. I can imagine technophobes interacting with this without the intimidation of a keyboard and cluttered GUI. Also abiguious gestures for common commands should be naturally apparnt. This immerging technology will obviously echo some of the features now commonly associated with the Iphone (such as on screen and customisable keyboards) but with more and more devices now being developed with touchscreen capabilities maybe its only a matter of time before we start seeing the keyboard and mouse/ Keypad and scroll wheel fall out of fashion and perhaps being as outdated a cliche as a punch-card!?
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