Archive for touch screens
by Imran Ali
March 26, 2008 at 1:43 pm · Filed under Books, Development, Gestural, Usage + Usability, User Interface, iPhone, touch screens
With an interminable three months before the June 2008 release of the iPhone SDK, jailbroken, hacked iPhones are still the preferred means of innovating for the iconic device. With this in mind, my O’Reilly-ian friends have just published iPhone: Open Application Development, a guide to writing ‘native Objective-C applications for the iPhone’.
The appears to be tailor made for the iPhone hacking community - from jailbreaking the AT&T/O2 lockdown to understanding the operating system, application structure, interface APIs (notably multitouch and accelerometer!) and multimedia operations.
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Incidentally, the subject of gestural interfaces is gaining some documented best practices thanks to the proliferation of iPhone and Nintendo’s Wii. I recently saw Dan Saffer speak about the design of gestural interfaces at O’Reilly’s ETech 2008 conference…the first chapter of his upcoming book on the subject is freely downloadable from the book’s official site. The sample offers some useful insights into the ergonomics and conventions of gestural UIs and an historical view of touchscreen technology.
by Imran Ali
September 16, 2007 at 7:58 pm · Filed under BUG, Chumby, Devices, GPS, Greenphone, Long Tail, Open Source, Openmoko, Platforms, Tuxphone, Wifi, touch screens
My dad was an electrician by profession, but even from childhood, he loved to take things apart and rebuild them into something new. An original tinkerer/hacker; when thieves stole a TV from Dad’s car, he designed and retrofitted an alarm of his own design; when we couldn’t install a doorbell to our aluminium framed front door, he designed and built a bell triggered by the opening of the letterbox. He’d love what the Bug Labs guys are about to launch…
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Bug Labs’ BUG product is something I’ve been jonesing to see for a couple months. BUG is essentialy an open source, modular consumer electronics platform that purports to making hardware design as easy as writing web applications.
The BUG system consists of…
- The BUGbase: a Linux-based computer with wifi, ethernet, USB, some onboard memory and rechargable batteries.
- BUGmodules: The company plans to offer GPS, cameras, touchscreen, motion sensors, keyboards and audio modules over the course of the next few months.
- Software: A combination of a software API and a developer community (BUGnet); I’m interested to see how Bug will enabled the various hardware components to be ’scripted’ together.
Open source hardware is nothing new - from my good friend Surj Patel’s Tuxphone project, to Trolltech’s Greenphone, the Chumby and Openmoko’s Neo1973 - but BUG’s moving beyond a single device made of open source components, to a series of hardware modules that can be combined and remixed into new device categories. BUG may represent the opening of the Long Tail of consumer electronics.
The implications on mobile communications are profound. What kinds of niche wifi messaging devices will BUG enable? Imagine the development of GSM, EDGE or 3G BUGmodules, leveraged by the BUGnet community?
Maybe BUG will enable my Dad to remix his car alarm with periodic texts asserting its GPS coordinates next time it’s stolen…
by Imran Ali
September 5, 2007 at 5:39 pm · Filed under Instant Messaging, SMS, Software, iPhone, touch screens
A few hours ago, Apple updated its iPod line for the hoiday season, with new nano and classic models. Most significantly, the range saw the addition of the iPod touch; essentially an iPhone, without the phone!
However, the iPod touch is significant for mobile messaging; though the iPhone includes a cute iChat-esque text messaging application, it lacks a native iChat (or other instant messaging) client.
Despite the inclusion of wifi browsing capability in the iPod touch, it also lacks iChat and IM, even though it would make for a great IM device in the home and at wireless hotspots (such as Apple’s newly announced partnership with Starbucks!).
Perhaps Apple will address this in future iterations of the iPhone and the iPod touch, letting innovation in its flagship models filter down to more affordable models. In the meantime, we’ll have to be content with third parties, such as meebo and random user hacks…
Oh and maxing out at 16Gb?! C’mon, put a hard disc in there already!
by Imran Ali
August 13, 2007 at 6:18 am · Filed under Devices, Mobile messaging 2.0, Usage + Usability, User Interface, iPhone, touch screens
Hot on the heels of some of the Haptic Messaging ideas I touched on a few weeks ago come a concept design for an All-In-One Haptic Phone at Yanko Design.
The Haptic Phone marries the tactility and physicality of a real keyboard with the infinite flexibility of a touchscreen interface. Both front and back surfaces of the handset are touchscreens where the surface area can raise itself to mimic any combination of buttons and keyboard layouts.
Implementing such a surface requires some quantum leaps in materials technology, yet perhaps an intermediary step worth exploring is to take a touchscreen surface and overlay a grid of fixed, raised, tactile ’soft keys’ that change function depending on the content of the touchscreen beneath them.
More broadly, such concepts point to a palpable lack of innovation in mobile design - with the exception of the iPhone. We’re demanding more from our handsets (GPS, imaging, web browsing…) and yet UI thinking still seems to be constrained to keypads and menus.
The computing power of today’s high-end handsets exceeds the Windows desktops of the mid-90s, yet we’re content to see Nokia expend R&D effort on a 3D version of Snakes rather than UIs that make handsets easier to use and easier to navigate.
by Imran Ali
July 24, 2007 at 6:53 am · Filed under Devices, Mobile messaging 2.0, Usage + Usability, User Interface, touch screens
In Spring 2006, I had the pleasure of spending a day working with students from Milan’s Interaction Design Institution (IDI).
Though I was there to work with students on a series of digital identity design explorations, some of the most thought provoking projects I saw were drawn from Oren Horev’s Shapeshifters, notably the Tactophone, a handset with an active, tactile surface.
Though conceptual, Tactophone illustrates where ‘touch’ may play a powerful role in messaging. Not simply iPhone-like touchscreens or Sony’s ’shake-control’, but a completely tangible and tactile surface that might deliver ‘touch-tones’ from callers.
During my visit, other students were already beginning to explore where Horev’s work could enhance their own. One locative project, Herescan, examines the immediate area for geo-tagged content and alerts the user to items of interest. Future suggested iterations of Herescan may use haptics to alert the user with subtle touches that don’t distract the user.
It isn’t difficult to concieve of a future where messaging isn’t a jarring, autistic ‘vibrate’ for every incoming message, but perhaps a gentle stroke from a loved one or a playful pinch from a friend. Mobile social networks with some inherent intimacy algorithms, coupled with various tangible media may bring us a future of haptic messaging that subtly alerts us to the nature of a message using one of our most powerful senses.
by Debi Jones
June 25, 2007 at 4:46 am · Filed under BREW07, Devices, Events + Conferences, LG Prada, Mobile Tech, Mobile messaging 2.0, iPhone, touch screens
Today mobile messaging allows one to tap out text messages, view images or pictures, hear music or audio clips and even watch the blend of image and audio as videos. In all of these examples, screen view plays a central role. What about those instances when you’re driving, at an event, in a meeting or in the classroom? If the phone in your pocket could provide important notices or messages even when you can’t view the screen that would be an innovation worthy of the phrase Mobile Messaging 2.0.
Immersion brings the sense of touch to mobile messaging and other mobile phone applications. “With the move to glass touch screens on phones, important tactile feedback has been removed” according to Richard Pierson, director of business development, at Immersion Corporation. Pierson continues, “On a touch screen how do you know that a number was actually entered?” Immersion makes use of haptics, a greek word meaning “the sense of touch,” commonly known as vibrations to provide tactile feedback and/or notices that an action has occurred. Haptics was first created for military applications, then later used as force feedback for PC flight simulators and more recently in gaming consoles of all types to create the rumble feel of action.
You’ve had the experience of talking through 10 minutes of uninterrupted silence when suddenly your phone rings and you learn that the other party dropped from the call 2 minutes after the you started. More than once you’ve heard too quite a call and pulled the phone from your ear or pocket to “see” if the call is still connected. And even though it appears connected, you still ask, “are you there?” If your handset manufacturer has the Immersion solution branded VibeTonz on board, then you’ll receive a unique vibration notification that allows you to feel that the call has dropped.
VibeTonz also provides “feel messaging” selected as various emoticons. Sending a “love” emoticon results in the receiver feeling a heartbeat. The smiling emoticon sends what feels like a giggle, rapid short bursts of vibration. The sensation of VibeTonz’s emoticons in vibration is amazingly intuitive. Unfortunately, VibeTonz isn’t a direct to consumer solution as it requires sensors and firmware - mostly firmware. Your handset must come with VibeTonz installed.
VibeTonz are currently available on a few Samsung devices from Verizon Wireless, Sprint, Alltel and MetroPCS in the US; SK Telecom in Korea; Orange in France and UK; and T-mobile in Germany and UK. I saw a demo using the LG Prada and rumor has it that Verizon Wireless will launch this device complete with VibeTonz in response to the iPhone.
Watch this site for an in depth podcast with Immersion coming soon.
