Introducing technology in everyday living is not as simple as it may seem. Many of us often use computers, mobile phones, and PDAs, devices that are getting more and more powerful and smarter. But what happens to all the other technologically enhanced products the market tries to convince us we need? The reality is that technology is quite often unreliable thus, our devices’ life is pretty short. Understandably, people are scared of changing the kitchen table LEDs and sensors every year or of having to call an engineer for it instead of doing it themselves.

For these reasons, I’m always very sceptical when I hear about a new electronic device that should enter our lives. I am definitely not against technology enhancements, but what I notice, unfortunately, is the lack of meaningful enhancements in the user experience, something that with a good interaction design can easily be achieved.

Size comparison between Chumby and a mug

Chumby is a product that doesn’t intend to replace any particular object already in our homes, although it could eventually replace many of them. It is a Linux-based compact device with touch screen that firstly, thanks to its wi-fi connection, allows you to run client applications off-line or connected to the Internet (from a simple clock alarm to a flicker pool visualizer), and secondly, thanks to its soft container and different sensors, to be controlled through physical interactions.

Cumby with a Flicker pool running

These features are already enough for it to be considered as a very cool gadget, however, I reckon that its strengths are somewhere else. Chumby is in fact “completely hackable” and can count on user generated widgets. So, if you are a developer/hacker, you can easily customize it yourself (also simply changing the crafted holder) or, if you aren’t, you can easily use some interesting widgets developed by someone else.

Some of widgets already available

No doubts hackers will love a device like this, but I’m sure that even normal web surfers will easily appreciate its potentialities and the many customizing possibilities they will have using someone else’s hacks.

Some exterior customizations

Therefore, an important success factor will be the simplicity of customizing hardware and software. Since the creators know it well, despite I couldn’t test it yet, I am pretty confident that for its launch, early this summer, they will provide a user-friendly extendible framework easily accessible by many developers. This will allow the community to grow consistently and find always new and fascinating applications for this smart product. Its relative low-tech components will hopefully help to make it long-lasting thus bringing back some of the trust people have lost in electronic devices.

From last year researchers started applying a technique known as FTIR (Frustrated total internal reflection), used in biometric for fingerprint image acquisition, to screens permitting to track more than one touch at the same time. A strength of this kind of solution is that it is relatively cheap, a weakness, instead, is that it requires a camera behind the display to capture the touches, so it means that these device can’t be flat. There could be still useful applications and it could be a very good starting point on experimenting with the design and development of software that uses this richer interaction that soon or later could become more portable, especially if it demonstrates its undoubted utility.

The most developed project based on FTIR seen so far is by Jeff Han that shows an incredibly variety of applications with some very interesting ideas for the interactions (look, for instance, how to control a 3D map with 3 fingers).

Different applications by Jeff Han

During his demonstration at TED Jeff is very confident about this new kind of interfaces, and, after seeing how to create and scale a keyboard, it becomes quite difficult not to agree with him.

Another project based on the same technique is tabulaTouch by Natural Interaction. At the moment the guys from Chianti didn’t developed yet softwares advanced like Han’s, but they have clear ideas on how to use it in two different contexts: browsing visual objects archives and viewing 3D maps (a more developed version of tabulaMaps).

tabulaMaps by Natural Interaction

Considering all the projects they did so far, there is no doubt they will come up with other interesting, maybe more developed, stuff soon.

The last project I’d like to talk about is Tangent, the diploma project by Christian Iten and Daniel Lüthi. It seems at a good status of development, considering all the interaction techniques designed. Some of them are based on neat ideas, for instance the “short-cut” to show the keyboard.

tangent by Christian Iten and Daniel Lüthi

It’s interesting also the interaction with physical objects, like the phycon, that reminds me some projects from the Tangible Media Group at M.I.T. Media Lab. I’m wondering which further development could have this project, considering the context where it has been developed.

All the hardware by these projects seems mature enough, despite Jeff Han talked about the possibility of recognizing which finger is which. I can’t imagine yet how it could be possible (maybe controlling the finger prints?), but that would definitely increase the power of an already impressive interface.
Due to the increasing number of researchers interested on this study we can be sure that it won’t take so long to see further developments, especially software-wise if we consider how many designers, me included, would love to play with interfaces like these.

Just watching these videos you realize how two cursors as input can be already very powerful to use a GUI. So I still don’t know why computers after more than 20 years still can’t handle two different mice. Is if for the same reason people never knew about some clever experimental keyboards?