Multi-touch interface revisited at TED 2007

Computer user interfaces have evolved considerably since the keyboard/mouse combination came around almost 30 years ago, but beyond improved usability, aesthetics, and responsiveness, the way we interact with computers has remained largely the same. Touch-screen user interfaces have made quite a number of advances in recent years, and are far more ubiquitous now than ever before, showing up in grocery store self-checkout lines, movie theaters, and airports. It’s no surprise why Jeff Han’s forward-looking multi-touch user interface concept made quite the splash at the 2006 TED conference last year. If you watch or have seen the video of his demo of the interface, you’ll immediately know why.

Many have compared Han’s work to the scene where Tom Cruise effortlessly drags around videos, panels and windows in the 2002 movie, Minority Report, and it’s exciting to think of how many practical applications this kind of interface could make its way into. Mapping, 3D and graphics design, and of course the military applications are some that immediately come to mind; It’s hard to imagine that DARPA doesn’t at the very least have an eye on this project. Han was showing off the tech again as shown in the linked video at this year’s TED, which just wrapped up a short while ago. More information about the work of Han and his team at NYU is available on NYU’s project page for Multi-Touch Interaction Research.

March 20, 2007 | Filed Under Uncategorized 

Comments

  • Abe Batthish on March 22nd, 2007 6:05 pm

    iPhone adopted some of this technology for its touch screen… specifically the zoom capability. http://www.apple.com/iphone/phone/
    See the photo viewer demo.

  • Adam on March 22nd, 2007 10:36 pm

    I thought the iPhone’s interface looked familiar when I saw Jobs give a demo of it. I think the photo manipulation interface they’ve put together on the iPhone is spectacular; Very intuitive, and a great implementation of this type of interactivity.

  • Desktop Multitouch coming? : AdamSchwabe.com on April 27th, 2007 4:31 pm

    [...] started around desktop multitouch screen technology, the same kind of tech I wrote about that was demonstrated at TED and that Apple will introduce with the iPhone. There’s many potential applications here, some [...]

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