Lucid Touch
Touch screens have become quite popular with the introduction of consumer electronics taking advantage of user friendly interfaces. The difference between the previous generation of touch screens leveraged by many ATMs and multitouch is that the user interface can recognize multiple simultaneous touch points.
The following links provide some more insights on the trouble with computing devices and well known examples of multitouch devices such as Microsoft’s Surface. As far as mobile devices is concerned, Apple’s iPhone and Sony’s Cybershot would be today’s leading references.
However, touch input on small screens can sometimes be troublesome and lead to typos if one’s fingers happen to hide parts of the user interface. Microsoft, Mitsubishi and the University of Toronto happen to be conducting research on LucidTouch a new technology which allows users to manage graphic interfaces by touching the back of the screen. The technique is called pseudo-transparency. Basically this is a video overlay recreating the shape of your fingers in real time or just showing the equivalent to fingertip cursors. The researchers’ thinking is that when interacting with the back side of the display you should still be able to see the entire screen.
References and picture credits:
- http://on10.net/blogs/tina/Lucid-Touch/
- http://research.microsoft.com/users/baudisch/projects/lucidtouch/
- http://www.patrickbaudisch.com/publications/2007-Wigdor-UIST07-LucidTouch.pdf
| J. de Francisco |  |
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| Chicago, IL. 25 June 08 |  |
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