xt1.org

Direct Manipulation Multi-Touch-screens

April 2nd, 2006

I want a user interface this cool and this interactive. (Full video at google)

Unlike the wall-size display that Tom Cruise used in Minority Report, this stuff is real.

The cool thing here is that the user interface supports multiple touch-points, so that you can use both hands and multiple fingers to manipulate the objects on the screen. You can thus rotate an image by pinning a corner and dragging the other corner with your other hand. You can scale and object by dragging its corners further apart. The whole UI becomes much more interactive and manipulable, in a way that should make the whole UI a sort of simulated, cartoon reality. Like a cartoon, everything is squishy and stretchable.

Randy Smith did some interesting UI work on this type of system via ARK (Alternate Reality Kit), but it was limited by having a single mouse pointer.

Self is another system that would work well with this kind of GUI - the objects have a virtual physicality that lends itself to direct manipulation. One of the GUIs built on Self implemented the Disney laws of animation, so that windows bounce and deform much like Bugs Bunny would, rather than just appearing out of thin air.

Entry Filed under: Usability