David Merrill: Siftables, the toy blocks that think
Posted by DK in Inspirations on April 6th, 2009
There are two kinds of people, visionaries and followers. Each year, visionaries from all around the world are gathered at a conference called TED, and spread their creative mind to their followers.
In 2009, MIT graduate David Merrill gave an excellent presentation on his new research. A bunch of small computerized tiles, cookie sized, are used to make math games, play music, painting color. It is such a brilliant and exciting idea that I can’t wait to see this to be a primary toolkit to engage and teach kids.
I just hope these blocks to be strong enough for kids to play with.
Wearable Mobile Phone from LG
Posted by DK in Inspirations on April 6th, 2009
LG announced its first wearable mobile phone called ‘Watch Phone’. LG did great on 2008, mostly on messaging phones with full keyboard capability. Their bestselling phone, Prada, is actually the first full-touch mobile phone which is more than half year ahead of Apple.
It looks like LG now wants to be called as the world’s most innovative company. Their first wearable product in the mobile industry is far beyond my expectation. It’s sleek and luxury - successor of their black label series.
It’s interesting how it changes the every interaction we used to have with mobile phone. Since it is tied to the wrist, it will probably be easier to call people with voice recognition from bluetooth. Different set of feedback will be required for receiving calls and typing numbers. GPS and inter-connectivity with other devices will boost the innovation in interaction between digital devices and wearable products.
I don’t expect Watch phone to replace the existing mobile business, but LG’s brave frist step into innovation will certainly payoff. I want to see more prototypes become real product, which we saw from Hollywood movies, SF fictions.
Gestural Interfaces: G-Speak
Posted by DK in Inspirations on April 6th, 2009
Oblong’s mind-blowing spatial operating environment, G-speak, inspired me a lot and got me thinking what will be the ‘killer’ next generation interaction technique. No doubt all these ‘touching’, ’spinning wheels’, ’speaking’ will become the standard for upcoming computers, there are less researches in gestural interfaces. To be precise, there are a lot of research in this area, but nobody seems to succeed in meeting design opportunity with product opportunity.
I hope it doesn’t end with inspirations, which they already did a very nice job, but more in actual living space backed up by industry giants.
http://oblong.com/
Next Generation Mobile Phone
Posted by DK in Inspirations on April 6th, 2009
A 16 year old boy Andrew Kim came up with a great idea - a concept phone called “Lavender”. As its name implies, the phone emits the fragrance of Lavender. Lavender and its smell brings up the image of ‘elegance’ and ‘beauty’, and its design successfully captured and incorporated this rich feeling.
Lavender Phone
Andrew’s creativity doesn’t end with the great design, its spec is a lot more amazing. Refillable perfume dispenser allows users to change perfumes at ease. UI shows perfume liquid in the background and this represents the remaining battery life. As its battery drains, perfume levels gets lowered. Customizable home screen, quick launch, etc. It sure will give a terrific user experience, especially women users. Read the rest of this entry »
Multi-touch: Jeff Han, Apple, Microsoft, and its Future
The idea of having more than one touch point in dealing with touch screen interfaces is nothing new to research people, however, Jeff Han’s shocking presentation at TED 2006 on his multi-touch UI fascinated everyone.
Multi-touch user interface has been the center of attention since then, and numbers of products has been released with having muti-touch as the key interaction technique. First and foremost, Apple had succeeded greatly with their new product line, iPhone and iPod Touch. iPhone is now the most selled phone in US in two year with their first phone. Multi-touch technology is incorporated quite well into iPhone, that it made web surfing (news reading), magnifing photos, etc, so easy. Read the rest of this entry »