Designing Interactions
As the world of technology continuously grows day by day, so do the techniques used to create these new technologies. Behind each new innovation is an individual who spends hours perfecting the smallest details on the newest form of technology. “Designing Interactions” by Bill Moggridge takes a look at the innovative minds behind these groundbreaking advances in technology.
Multi sensory media is the future of technology. As devices become more interdependent, multi sensory media becomes more important. Technology today only uses vision and touch. There is room for growth and the incorporation of all five senses. Hiroshi Ishii, who works in the MIT Media Lab, belives that the future is in the Tangible User Interface over the Graphical User Interface. A Tangible User interface is a physical interface that serves as a control mechanism.
Joy Mountford, who worked with the Human Interface group at Apple, was one of the developers of Quicktime. Moving video to the computer was a giant leap in technology at the time. At first, they created the “Dicon”, or Dynamic Icon, which was just a frame-by-frame sequence. From there, Mountford and her team incorporated sound and video into the computer experience.
Dune and Raby, on the other hand, looked at a more psychological approach to design. They believed in the “Alternative Now”, which looks at each individual’s more complex pleasures. One way this is shown is by appealing to one’s bad side. An example of this was the “truth phone”, which measures the stress in one’s voice on the phone, and makes a buzzing noise to inform the listener whether the other person on the line is lying.
Another advancement in technology is the development of Augmented Reality and its incorporation in modern devices. Jun Rekimoto worked with Sony in the development of Augmented Reality. Rekimoto wanted to incorporate gestural interfaces, or simple hand gestures, with augmented reality. Rekimoto forecasted the future technology extremely well, predicting the mash up of “a computer and a cell phone” in 2007.
Each of these innovative people contributed to the design and way of thinking found in modern technology today.
