We're back in action after a Thanksgiving break filled with turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie. Now it's the holiday season (at least, here in the U.S.) and we're filled with good will toward developers. Today I wanted to talk about a couple things we just finished polishing up.

First, the Android 1.0 SDK, release 2 is now available. Like the previous 1.0_r1 release, this new 1.0_r2 build creates applications that are compatible with Android 1.0 devices, such as the T-Mobile G1. This new release fixes a few bugs. In 1.0_r1, it was possible for developers to write technically-illegal code by using the Java Reflection APIs to access private or protected fields and methods. 1.0_r2 fixes that problem by enforcing private/protected visibility of items accessed via Reflection. Meanwhile, the class android.R.styleable was included in 1.0_r1 primarily for documentation purposes as a way for developers to look up the style attributes available to them to use. However, actually referring to that class via source code would result in applications that might break when run on future versions of the Android platform, so 1.0_r2 corrects the oversight and removes access to the class from the android.jar file. (The class remains in the documentation for reference purposes, though.)

Both of these problems are obscure "future-proofing" issues, and I'd be quite surprised if they actually caused problems for anyone, but now they're fixed. 1.0_r2 also includes a few other smaller changes; check out the release notes for all the details.

Second, many of you have asked if developer devices will be available. We've worked with our partners to create a program for developers to purchase devices that enable them to test and debug applications more easily.

I think these new tools will be quite helpful to developers, and I'm looking forward to seeing what people do with Android, next.

Designing and developing user interfaces for Android is very different from doing so in a regular desktop environment. Because Android runs applications on mobile devices, application designers and developers must deal with numerous constraints that are not always obvious. To help you design and develop better applications, we are publishing a new series of posts focusing on Android user interfaces. In this series, we will give you design guides and tools, development tips, and explain the fundamental principles of the Android UI toolkit. The goal here is simple: we want to help you design and develop a great user experience. To start off this series, I'd like to introduce touch mode, one of the most important principles of the UI toolkit.

The touch mode is a state of the view hierarchy that depends solely on the user interaction with the phone. By itself, the touch mode is something very easy to understand as it simply indicates whether the last user interaction was performed with the touch screen. For example, if you are using a G1 phone, selecting a widget with the trackball will take you out of touch mode; however, if you touch a button on the screen with your finger, you will enter touch mode. When the user is not in touch mode, we talk about the trackball mode, navigation mode or keyboard navigation, so do not be surprised if you encounter these terms. Finally, there is only one API directly related to touch mode, View.isInTouchMode().

Sounds easy enough right? Oddly enough, touch mode is deceivingly simple and the consequences of entering touch mode are far greater than you might think. Let's look at some of the reasons why.

Touch Mode, Selection, and Focus

Designing a UI toolkit for mobile devices is difficult because of the various interaction mechanisms they provide. Some devices offer only 12 keys, some have a touch screen, some require a stylus, some have both a touch screen and a keyboard. In that regard, it is a great benefit for the Android development community that the first commercially available device, the G1, offers multiple forms of input using a touch screen, a trackball, and a keyboard. Because the user can interact with applications using three different mechanisms, we had to think very hard about all the possible issues that could arise. One issue led us to create the touch mode.

Imagine a simple application, ApiDemos for example, that shows a list of text items. The user can freely navigate through the list using the trackball and they can also scroll and fling the list using their finger. The issue in this scenario is the selection. If I select an item at the top of the list and then fling the list towards the bottom, what should happen to the selection? Should it remain on the item and scroll off the screen? In this case, what would happen if I then decide to move the selection with the trackball? Or worse, if I press the trackball to act upon the currently selected item, which is not shown on screen anymore. After careful considerations, we decided to remove the selection altogether.

In touch mode, there is no focus and no selection. Any selected item in a list of in a grid becomes unselected as soon as the user enters touch mode. Similarly, any focused widgets become unfocused when the user enters touch mode. The image below illustrates what happens when the user touches a list after selecting an item with the trackball.

To make things more natural for the user, the framework knows how to resurrect the selection/focus whenever the user leaves touch mode. For instance, in the example above, if the user were to use the trackball again, the selection would reappear on the previously-selected item. This is why some developers are confused when they create a custom view and start receiving key events only after moving the trackball once: their application is in touch mode, and they need to use the trackball to exit touch mode and resurrect the focus.

The relationship between touch mode, selection, and focus means you must not rely on selection and/or focus to exist in your application. A very common problem with new Android developers is to rely on ListView.getSelectedItemPosition(). In touch mode, this method will return INVALID_POSITION. You should instead use click listeners or the choice mode.

Focusable in Touch Mode

Now that you know focus doesn't exist in touch mode, I must explain that it's not entirely true. Focus can exist in touch mode but in a very special way we call focusable in touch mode. This special mode was created for widgets that receive text input, like EditText or, when filtering is enabled, ListView. This is why the user can type text inside a text field without first selecting it with the trackball or their finger. When a user touches the screen, the application will enter touch mode if it wasn't in touch mode already.  What happens during the transition to touch mode depends on what the user touched, and what currently has focus.  If the user touches a widget that is focusable in touch mode, that widget will receive focus.  Otherwise, any currently focused widget will not retain focus unless it is focusable in touch mode. For instance, in the picture below, when the user touches the screen, the input text field receives the focus.

Focusable in touch mode is a property that you can set yourself either from code or XML. However, it should be used sparingly and only in very specific situations as it breaks consistency with Android normal behavior. A game is a good example of an application that can make good use of the focusable in touch mode property. MapView, if used in fullscreen as in Google Maps, is another good example of where you can use focusable in touch mode correctly.

Below is another example of a focusable in touch mode widget. When the user taps an AutoCompleteTextView's suggestion with his finger, the focus remains on the input text field:

New Android developers often think that focusable in touch mode is the solution they need to "fix" the problem of disappearing selection/focus. We really encourage you to think very hard before using it. If used incorrectly, it can make your application behave differently from the rest of the system and simply throw off the user's habits. The Android framework contains all the tools you need to handle user interactions without using "focusable in touch mode". For example, instead of trying to make ListView always keep its selection, simply use the appropriate choice mode. And if you feel that the framework does not suit all your need, feel free to let us know or contribute a patch.

Touch Mode Cheat Sheet

Do:

• Remain consistent with the core applications
• Use the appropriate feature if you need persistent selection (radio button, check box, ListView's choice mode, etc.)
• Use focusable in touch mode if you write a game

Don't:

• Do not try to keep the focus or selection in touch mode

This week's developer video features Jason Tomlinson of Hands-On Mobile. He wrote Amazed, an application open sourced in the apps-for-android project. Things Jason mentions in the videos include:

• Amazed was built primarily to get familiar with the accelerometer. This helped him in his work on Guitar Hero® World Tour Mobile for Android.
• Using traceview to track down which methods take the most CPU cycles.

This and other Android developer videos can be found here.

Every once in a while I get amazed by the amount of communication that goes on globally today. I really think humanity is gearing up to make some unprecedented progress in the course of the next millennia, when it comes to idea sharing and innovation. This video demonstrates some of the Facebook activity going on, and it's really happening across the globe.

While my Swedish upbringing wouldn't incline me to use quite as big words as the man in the video, I definitely agree. Navigating lots and lots of pictures and video on your TV is a chore if you have to use a remote control from the previous century. I certainly like the ring-shaped remote. Snazzy.

It's hard to keep up with everything everybody is doing. This concept video is two years old already. Over a million people have seen it on Youtube, and now it has finally come to my attention. Gorgeous, and slightly unrealistic. That is, until someone just goes ahead and does it. I'm waging I don't have to wait for too long. E-paper is just maturing, and probably materials that can bend in this manner are only just around the corner.

Sony CSL made a flexible prototype a few years back called Gummi. Their main limitation back then was that you couldn't make the screen bend. But now you can, so...

Very funny. More at Smule's webpage.

I think this is a really powerful tool in the hands of smart people. Maybe a more common use will be a lens on page 3 girls though. ;)

This is like web Quicksilver on steroids.

Ctazy.

Similar to the Stane concept, this idea from UIST 2008 allows you to assign meaning to different types of scratching on different types of surfaces. I like the double tap on the wall to silence audio. Neat.

More here.

/Staffan Lincoln

OctoPocus from olivier bau on Vimeo.

I've used marking menus a lot in Maya, where they are fast and efficient. And I don't want to live without the back gesture in Opra. So I'm always happy to see someone take the next step with gestures. The esthetic potential of OctoPocus is very high indeed. This could be both helpful and beautiful. A wonderful marriage between tech and design. Well done Olivier.

/Staffan Lincoln

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

The guys at Oblong have been busy since the film after all. They have been very quiet for some time now.

/Staffan Lincoln

I can see myself using the rotation for increasing and decreasing the brush size; something I do constantly while drawing. I actually own the Wacom 6D Art pen, but don't use it since neither Photoshop, nor any other program I've encountered uses the roll feature for anything useful.

/Staffan Lincoln

A pretty nice way of peeking into a UI by holding a physical object above the screen and get more detailed information.

/Tobias Andersson - 10/30/2008

This summer at CHI in Florence, we saw the Video Browsing by Direct Manipulation, that was an amazing new technology for surveillance cams, and has been shown on Youtube 59.000 times. This video shows a concept that is just as amazing, and looks like it's even more useful and robust. This came from the working conference on Advanced visual interfaces in Italy.

/Staffan Lincoln - 10/22/2008

I can't beleive this is from 1995. The performance they have on the rendering this tree is flawless. They had some sharp minds at Xerox Parc back in the days.

/Staffan Lincoln - 10/22/2008

The ProjectoUI is a futuristic concept video of phones which can project their UIs and interface with each other to create a unique experience.

/Vanessa - 10/16/2008

Ok, this is nerdy, and old. But the guy's glasses are priceless.

/Staffan Lincoln - 10/22/2008

This seems like a neat sketching tool for 3D. I suppose it has a bit of a learning curve though, because all of the commands are gestures, so they´re hard to discover and hard to remember.

/Staffan Lincoln - 10/15/2008

Turn your phone upside down to engage keylock.

/Staffan Lincoln - 10/8/2008

This slows or speeds up your mousecursor depending on a grayscale image. Skip to 06:50 to see the suggested application areas of this technique. You can download a test-version at http://www.ifeelpixel.com/ But it is donation-ware so you have to make a small donation if you want to download. After trying it out myself I conclude that it feels wierd, but the technology has some potential. But you will have to author some dephtmaps if the technology is going to be more useful than annoying.

This slows or speeds up your mousecursor depending on a grayscale image. Skip to 06:50 to see the suggested application areas of this technique. You can download a test-version at http://www.ifeelpixel.com/ But it is donation-ware so you have to make a small donation if you want to download. After trying it out myself I conclude that it feels wierd, but the technology has some potential. But you will have to author some dephtmaps if the technology is going to be more useful than annoying.

/Staffan Lincoln - 10/7/2008

A new concept from TAT - the KUB, a tangible music playing device. Turn it, flip it, spin it, touch it, it responds by playing music, changing songs, volume, etc! Directing, Filming, and Interviews done by Josef Granqvist, TAT, Concept by Luke.

/Vanessa - 10/7/2008

Be a rockstar with your own mobile, do your drum solo sequence to unlock your mobile!




Click your location on the spinning globe to unlock your phone.




Slide the background to discover applications, and slide one further to unlock the phone, opening to that application!




Using a combination lock, unlock the code to unlock your mobile!




We customize UI's all the time, why not customize the unlocking sequence? Drag and drop icons to unlock your mobile.


These are all concepts from TAT.

/Vanessa - 10/7/2008

A pretty nice way to make use of your old laser pointer. Oh come on, admit it, you have one lying around at home somewhere. ;)

/Tobias Andersson - 9/23/2008

Using the Wii Balance Board to actually walk in Google Street View. Looks pretty funny, but the turning part seems a bit slow. I would rather use the board in combination with the Wii remote, so that you walk with the board and make turns with the remote. That would have been a faster way to interact.

/Tobias Andersson - 8/22/2008

Brainloop is an interactive performance platform that utilizes a Brain Computer Interface (BCI) system which allows a subject to operate devices merely by imagining specific motor commands. These mentally visualized commands may be seen as the rehearsal of a motor act without the overt motor output; a neural synapse occurs but the actual movement is blocked at the corticospinal level. Motor imagery such as "move left hand", "move right hand" or "move feet" become non-muscular communication and control signals that convey messages and commands to the external world. In Brainloop the performer is able - without physically moving - to investigate urban areas and rural landscapes as he globe-trots around virtual Google Earth.

/Pontus Jarenskog - 8/21/2008

John Nilssons invention lets the gamer experience up to 50% more of the game. The main idea behind the interface to to alter the Field of View (FOV) in a game with a few simple commands and use a projector to provide gamers with a 180-degrees of game display. See for your self. His English is by the way hilarious...

/Pontus Jarenskog - 8/21/2008

The work presents a system for automatically producing a wide variety of video enhancements and visual effects. Unlike traditional visual effects software (e.g., After Effects, Shake, Boujou, etc), the system is completely automatic and no manual labor is required from the user. The major limitation of the work is that it can currently handle only videos of static scenes (i.e., videos shot with a moving camera but containing no moving objects in the scene). Efforts are being made to lift this restriction in future work.

More at: http://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/videoenhancemen/videoEnhancement.htm

/Staffan Lincoln - 8/21/2008

Here's a video from the KDDI AU x Yamaha mobile exhibition at kddi lab Harajuku.
This project actually consists of 6 prototypes, all which combines mobile phones and musical instruments.
Unfortunately the Youtube videos are quite bad so I suggest you to check the concept website for more details on the different prototypes.

http://www.au.kddi.com/au_design_project/models/2008/gakki/index.html?event=0

/Pontus Jarenskog - 8/20/2008

Here's a magnetized workbench that nobody has found a use for. Although it seems completely useless it works (wait for it) EVEN WHEN SET ON FIRE!

/Staffan Lincoln - 8/19/2008

If you put acceleration sensors and LED's in a ball, this opens up whole new ways to play with it. Here are some examples thought of by people at the University of Electro-Communications in Japan.

/Staffan Lincoln - 8/17/2008

If there's anything cooler than free floating magnets, I don't know what it is. People at the Carnegie Mellon University have developed a stove sized magnetic interface that lets you navigate and rotate in any direction.


/Staffan Licnoln 8/18/2008

This wierd Japanese device simulates ants crawling. Why, because it's scary and strangely enjoyable.

/Staffan Lincoln - 8/17/2008

This is another take on the Photosynth. From the collaborative research team from the University of Washington and Microsoft Research. How can we take thousands of photos from Flickr and generate the experience of being at a famous place?

A Display made of Spandex! Seriously, what will people think of next?

/Staffan Lincoln - 8/14/2008

This video, from last years Siggraph (2007), presents a system where you can have a wall sized display that only one person in the room can see. Pretty neat.

/Staffan Lincoln - 8/14/2008

Readers of this blog may remember the Real-Time Gradient-Domain Painting post from two months ago. This video features a similar system: Painting with gradients.

/Staffan Lincoln - 8/14/2008

The original seamcarving published last year at Siggraph was amazing. I NEVER thought it could be done on video.

/Staffan Lincoln - 8/14/2008

This looks really versatile. I would love it if this could melt my bulky Wacom pad right into my workdesk. I wonder about the radiation though. Would it be comparable to a mobile phone?

/Staffan Lincoln - 8/14/2008

This just blows me away. Tactile response in mid-air! From Siggraph 2008 and University of Tokyo.

/Staffan Lincoln - 8/14/2008

Interesting multitouch technology from Microsoft. Notice in the end of the video how the bars rise when you put more pressure on the pad.

/Tobias Andersson - 8/3/2008

A spherical display affords multiple persons a way to interact without anyone having a dominant position, much like King Arthurs round table.

/Staffan Lincoln - 8/1/2008

It is an interactive, persuasive game built into an ordinary lunch tray to assist parents to improve dietary behaviors of their young children. The persuasive game is played over a smart lunch tray. By eating from the lunch tray, the child gets rewarded by an animation of a cartoon character. More papers and videos from UbiComp Lab at: http://mll.csie.ntu.edu.tw/projects.php

/Staffan Lincoln - 7/22/2008

Things that nerds love: 1. Laser 2. Robots 3. High speed cameras This UI concept from 2005 has them all. Check out more videos and concepts from the same team featuring high speed laser guided robots at: http://www.k2.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/papers/fusion_movies-e.html

/Staffan Lincoln - 7/1/2008

It is about a playful toothbrush to assist parents in motivating and getting their young children into a habit of proper and thor-ough tooth brushing. The system includes a vision-based motion tracker that recognizes different tooth brushing motions, and a fun tooth brushing game in which a young child clean his/her mirror dirty virtual teeth by physically brushing his/her own teeth. More projects and papers at the NTU Ubicomp Lab: http://mll.csie.ntu.edu.tw/projects.php

/Staffan Lincoln - 7/22/2008

If you put this on a helmet it can save you from bumping into things. I'm 1.92m tall and usually wear a cap, which means I occasionally bump my head into objects I can't see. I can see the utility of such a device.

/Staffan Lincoln - 6/27/2008

This looks like a wierd new way to paint with gradients. I would love to try it out, and a demo is promised to appear on their webpage before 15th of August. http://graphics.cs.cmu.edu/projects/gradient-paint/

/Staffan Lincoln - 6/25/2008

PaperWindows seem to require a projector and video in the roof, so this might not be right around the corner, but it's an interesting interaction for a flexible surface I think. More at: http://www.hml.queensu.ca/

/Staffan Lincoln - 6/14/2008

Using the Wii balance board with Google Earth to fly over the earth like you're using a "Back To The Future II"-like hover board. Pretty cool!

/Tobias Andersson - 5/29/2008

Autodesk Research has come up with a brilliant innovation on the classic marking menus. It's kind of hard to really appreachiate until you try it out for yourself. Which you can do at: http://piecursor.com/

/Staffan Lincoln - 5/28/2008

Featuring nice looking screens, Windows 7 grows up to have multi-touch built in, just like that other phone. It even has an application dock, just like... Revealed at the D6 conference: http://d6.allthingsd.com/20080527/gates_ballmer/

/Design4use - 5/28/2008

This dude hooked up a bicycle to Google Earth's Flight Simulator. So now he can exercise and see the world. I think it's lovely. He uses a wireless accellerometer called SunSPOT to convey the information from the steering wheel.

/Staffan Lincoln - 5/22/2008

I like the fact that just by making this controller a lot bigger, it lends itself to multiplayer mode. I have played two games in my youth where two people controlled one avatar, and I have very fond memories of it.

/Staffan Lincoln - 5/20/2008

According to Seth Sandler, all you need is a webcam, a cardboard box, a picture frame and some basic programming skills.

/Staffan Lincoln - 5/21/2008

While it might be a neat feature for deaf people, I think this is great for anyone listening to music. This software also one of the 50 winners in the Android Challenge.

/Staffan Lincoln - 5/19/2008

Far beyond the Anoto Pen...

/Simon Thorsander - 5/15/2008

A Japanese Trailer showing the first glimpse of Wii Fit Snowboarding using the Wii's Balance Board. I think it has two weight sensors, one for each foot. I sure would like to try the football game.

/Staffan Lincoln - 5/9/2008

Lots of ideas about projector flashlight usage for multiple users. I really like the shared calendar. That's just beautiful.

/Staffan Lincoln - 5/8/2008

That's a really small projector. No seriously, it's small. More about it here: http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=13935

/Staffan Lincoln - 5/8/2008

As you may know, we're big fans of the Wiimote. If we find someone who does something funny with it we post it here.

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/29/2008

Translating as "sound on your palm", Tenori-on is a music instrument with toy like features. The device has a 16x16 grid of LED buttons for making music sequencer style, while blending the created sounds with aesthetically pleasing lights. Creating music is definitely straightforward and the device has some interesting functions that differentiate from regular music creation tools. For example, sweeping over the surface creates sound patterns while the “bouncing ball” makes a noise every time it hits the bottom.

/Roger Andersson Reimer - 4/21/2008

One of the most original PlayStation games ever. The game changed depending upon whatever music you were listening to. You can find out more about it at http://www.vibribbon.com

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/25/2008

What if you can record a real instrument and then edit each chord individually; the pitch, length, timing, placement? DVICE has build Direct Note Access to do this - check it out!

/Hampus Jakobsson - 4/18/2008

This arpeggiator breaks the well established pattern that time runs horizontally from left to right. Cudos for changing a concept we we all take for granted into something new and exciting.

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/17/2008

Phone Phight, by Russ Anderson, is a game in the starwars genre where two people battle it out using their Nokia N95s as "lightsabres". The phones are bluetooth connected and uses the game uses the accelerometer and bluetooth to decide who wins.

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/12/2008

Monome 256 Press Cafe. Albeit a little cryptic, this certainly looks like a fun toy. I'm guessing you could take this paradigm and make a really good looking music toy on a mobile device with a touch screen. First thing I would introduce is difference in velocity. Make the dot's size/velocity dependent on how hard you press.

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/16/2008

Looks like the accellerometer works fine for navigating in a first person shooter. Would be nice to try that out.

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/11/2008

This is a visualisation of e-mail. It's pretty far out for a task that is so focused on productivity and serious work. I'm thinking you could take these design ideas and use them when making a virtual sound synthesizer, which is more about play anyway. You will probably have to follow the link to understand how it works.

http://carohorn.de/anymails/

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/11/2008

This looks really fast and robust. If you count the slots you get 50. So that's enough for the english alphabet and some additional keys like caps lock, backspace and enter. You could arrange it in western mode so that the first button to the left is "a-e", second is "f-j", and so fourth. It's the best two-joystick text input I've seen to date. Good work.

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/9/2008

Nokia done it, Sony-Ericsson done it and now LG... ...Mobile Phone Clock Solution

/Simon Thorsander - 4/9/2008

This is what you can do with a projector in a propeller plane. Fun.

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/9/2008

In this video from CHI2008, the authors outline an idea where you have a rough surface on a lump of plastic. Embedded in the lump is a microphone, much like in a mobile phone. When you scratch different parts of the surface, the sound is recognized by the phone and can be interpreted in various ways. It's an amazingly low-cost input mode.

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/9/2008

Some of this stuff really isn't all that far away. At CHI 2008, there was a paper called "Dynamic Knobs: Shape Change as a Means of Interaction on a Mobile Phone". Imagine a spring loaded mechanism, such as a ball-point pen. Or you could move the button with small motors, just the way a compact camera does with it's lens. The button would plop out when you get a message. You could then reach down into your pocket and feel that there is a message waiting for you, because there would be a button sticking out from the surface of your mobile phone.

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/9/2008

This video describes a tilt based marking menu for pens.

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/8/2008

This was just presented at CHI 2008 and it blows my mind. It's video navigation like I never have seen it before. I first thought it was a joke!

Meanwhile, another team released the same idea. If any of these teams were planning to file a patent, I suspect it will be problematic now.



/Staffan Lincoln - 4/8/2008

It's a portable mouse with new pressure sensitive and new haptic feedback. I can't wait for commersialisation!

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/7/2008

Hex is a probabilistic text entry system using a hexagonal grid. Probabilities from a language model alter the dynamics of the interface, guiding the user by reducing effort needed to enter probable sequences.

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/7/2008

This video, by Ka-Ping Yee, is great in so many ways. I love the ingenuity of his prototyping, and even though none of his input methods are viable, I'm sure this is the way we will interact will mobile phones in the future. Most phones nowadays are prepared for video telephony and have a tiny camera pointing at the user. I can imagine a face tracking algorith to be used for navigating a space like this. Maybe you could use a combination of gyros and accellerometers to accomplish the same thing.

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/7/2008

This video presents an idea of augmented reality, where a mobile phone with a camera is used to find dynamic information in a map.

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/6/2008

This has some nice new ideas about using shake gestures for interaction. It's by John Williamson and Lorna Brown at Microsoft Research.

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/6/2008

The NovInt Falcon is a parallel robot. Parallel robots are called such because they have multiple chains of joints working together to create the final position of the controller (or end effector, if you want to be technical about it).

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/6/2008

A Wizard of Oz Prototyping Tool for Speech User Interfaces. Read more and download free at: http://dub.washington.edu/projects/suede/

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/4/2008

VoiceDraw is a drawing program designed to be controlled using only one's voice. Since no mouse, keyboard or stylus is required, it can be used by people with various forms of motor impairments to express themselves creatively. You may recognize this, because it is basen on the Vocal Joystick Engine that has been featured on this blog previously.

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/4/2008

Just disconnecting a touchpad shouldn't feel so novel, but it does. I Like it. Maybe the remote for your TV will look like this in a few years. The standard design for TV remotes has sucked for sooo many years now.

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/3/2008

This concept shows an beautiful combination of visual effects and touch interaction. Doing key presses and selection changes the surrounding interface visuals through ink-and-water effects. A interesting means of feedback that can add to enjoyment, visual immersion and relaxation during use.

/Roger Andersson Reimer - 4/3/2008

Though it may be a while before these kinds of large screens become common, there are some interesting UI behaviours in this video. I kind of like the floating mode switch tool, that tries to be close at hand, yet stay out of the way. Imagine this behaviour for the floating toolbar in Photoshop. Would it be sweet or would it drive you insane? Only one way to find out.

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/2/2008

I'm building a big ass table, just for fun and research. When pondering about tactile feedback for the table Johan Larsby suggested a harddrive. It kind of makes sense since the arm is constructed for very precise control. This video proves that it can be done. How it would feel is another matter.

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/2/2008

I'm about to try to design a UI-flow editor. It will require some heavy duty graph visualizations, and maybe I'll borrow some ideas from this video. Just watching it makes me feel dizzy and ignorant. I suspect there's a whole field of research that I have yet to explore. This video is from a conference called InfoVis and it's from 2005. I sure would appreciate any comments on where I can find more cool connection-graph-stuff.

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/2/2008

This looks great. I'm sure there are lots of other applications for this kind of tilt behaviour.

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/1/2008

Check out the crazy twist lens in this clip. Very unexpected. (You might have to click on this video to get an enlarged view. The details are kind of small.)

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/1/2008

I like the pressure activated zooming for the eyedropper in the end. Eye dropping thin lines can be a pain.

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/1/2008

Here's a novel way of displaying pressure. I also like the elasticly following lens. It looks smooth.

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/1/2008

Coming from a 3D-art background myself, I really apprechiate the 3D-paint application. This is a task that normally requires constant mode-switching.

/Staffan Lincoln - 4/1/2008

I think this is the samsung Haptic phone SCH-W420 / SPH-W4200. Someone wrote that it uses a vocabulary of 22 different vibrations to simulate actual feels and actions. This may be a huge leap from previous phones. I know the Sony Ericsson phones essentially have two vibration symbols. One short, that encourages the user to look at the display at his/her leisure, and one longer and repeating, urging the user to immediately interact with the phone.

/Staffan Lincoln - 3/30/2008

This is an old demo, but I'm trying to gather all kinds of interesting UI-behaviour on this blog and I haven't seen this behaviour anywhere else. It's certainly new to me.

/Staffan Lincoln - 3/28/2008

I think this is really elegant. It is the ebodiment of what the guys at Amazon wanted to build but just couldn't imagine. From Nicholas Chen at the University of Maryland.

/Staffan Lincoln - 3/28/2008

A sweet little portable DJ-esque music player, fully loaded with audio manipulation features, enabling limitless mixing between two independent channels.

/Staffan Lincoln - 3/27/2008

A little off topic for this blog, but a sweet motiongraphics video - an animated groovebox =)

/Staffan Lincoln - 3/27/2008

Patrick Baudisch at Microsoft Research has done it again. This is an elegant solution to indicate where off-screen objects are.

/Staffan Lincoln - 3/25/2008

This is from a paper by Miguel A. Nacenta, and it's about different interaction techniques for large surfaces. I really like the Pantograph version, where you got a line that extends out onto the surface.

/Staffan Lincoln - 3/25/2008

The Lean and Zoom system detects a user’s proximity to the display using a camera and magnifies the on-screen content proportionally. This alleviates dramatic and uncomfortable leaning and makes items more readable.

/Staffan Lincoln - 3/25/2008

When designing user interfaces of the future, the ability to crank out lots of ideas relating to animation will give you a competitive edge. This is the the worlds fastest tool for sketching animation. Thank you Richard Davis. Download K-Sketch from http://www.k-sketch.org/

/Staffan Lincoln - 3/25/2008

As you may know, I'm a big fan of Dasher. In this incarnation, Keith Vertanen has fused a speech recognizer with Dasher, in the hope to speed up input, and lessen the agony of correcting misinterpretations. Interesting.

/Staffan Lincoln - 3/24/2008

Interactive playgrounds which can be used in several ways. A perfect usage would be interactive advertising at exhibitions!

/Staffan Lincoln - 3/20/2008

A novel game, soon to maybe be realeased on the IPhone. By the company Demiforce.

/Staffan Lincoln - 3/3/2008

A collection of novel gestures for use on a trackpad.

/Staffan Lincoln - 2/27/2008

This wallmounted screen essentially works as a gigantic scrollbar handle. It's great when you have vast amounts of screen real-estate. I think it's a lovely way to use the surface around the screen for interaction. Maybe you could do something similar with a mobile phone...

/Staffan Lincoln - 1/29/2008

This video takes the bump-connect a little step forward. I really like the proposal to tilt one device to pour its contents to another device, just like you would pour water from a pitcher. Poetic.

/Staffan Lincoln - 1/28/2008

This environment supports meetings and is created by the i3pgroup in Italy. http://tcc.itc.it/research/i3p/

Staffan Lincoln - 1/28/2008

A lovely toy for playing with short recorded sounds. Any kid who can pour waterout of a pitcher and put a lid on something could pick it up and play with it. Developed by Mark Hauenstein and Tom Jenkins.

/Staffan Lincoln - 1/28/2008

Interesting metaphor for drag and drop. Another problem with the good old ways of doing cut and paste is that the user gets no feedback whatsoever when she presses CTRL-C. I think this is very promising.

/Staffan Lincoln - 1/24/2008

Nice way of mitigating the frustrating effects of having a very small touchpad. It saves you from having to lift and drag your finger over and over again to move your cursor from the left boundary of your screen to your right. It would be interesting to know if the constant mode-switching drives you crazy or if it feels natural.

/Staffan Lincoln - 1/24/2008

A German genius called Jörn Loviscach at Hochscule Bremen has thought of a way to hack a screen that was only intended for single point interaction, so that you can use the "pinch-technique" (where you use your thumb and index finger to zoom in and out in Apple's iPhone) More about how you do this and what the limitations are in his paper: Two-finger input with a standard touch screen, published at UIST 2007, and available at ACM Digital Library. I especially like the rotary knobs at the end.

/Staffan Lincoln - 1/23/2008

This is a company founded by Jeff Han, the famous multi-point user interface designer. It is an interesting company to keep an eye on. Some of their technology made it into the iPhone. www.perceptivepixel.com

/Staffan Lincoln - 1/23/2008

This looks like a lovely toy. I would love to be able to play with it with my friends and kids.

/Staffan Lincoln - 1/18/2008

This is a video for tracking your head and making 3D worlds more immersive. The technology used here requires mounting hardware on your head. But if you had a camera pointed at your head, like you do in most modern mobile phones, you could use a face detection algorithm for tracking your head. The head tracking could be further aided by an accellerometer, like the one you have in the WII remote and in some mobile phones. More stuff here: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/

/Staffan Lincoln - 1/14/2008

Drawing a circle for approximate location is useful in other circumstances too, like if you drive your car through a tunnel, and the device can't know excactly where you are, but can make a pretty good guess. The radius of the circle tells the user the precision of the guessed position.

/Staffan Lincoln - 1/5/2008

A touch based Windows Mobile home screen application. An interesting example even though it is just a skin deep surface solution (once you leave the home screen (plugin) you are back to (not so) good old on non-touch WinMo standard UI). The interesting part is that it is not just copy-paste on iPhone functionality and feel, but little more of a fresh take - the list scroll functionality, for example, illustrates this.

/Daniel Johansson - 1/4/2008

It's amazing what you can do with household hardware and expert programming skills. I'm sure it feels lovely to use it. What would be the perfect application to control, given what it feels like?

/Staffan Lincoln - 12/2/2007

This input device looks like a wacom tablet with a built in camera. I found it on Bill Buxtons excellent overview of input devices.

Read more about this input device here.

The ever productive Patrick Baudisch at Microsoft Research et al. has produced this interesting prototype that takes mobile touch one step forward.

/Staffan Lincoln - 12/2/2007

!NERD WARNING! This clip contains references to science fiction and a cult synthesizer.

/Staffan Lincoln - 11/22/2007

It's low cost and low-rez. What can you do with it?

Maybe silence the alarm of a mobile phone? Maybe activate the screensaver on your computer? Mute sound of the radio in your car? Interact with a smell display?

It's a techinque that hasn't found a killer app yet. Think of what might be possible!

Read the paper from UIST-07 here:
http://www.shwetak.com/papers/uist07_blui.pdf

Totally useless but funny use of an accelerometer.

/Staffan Lincoln - 10/19/2007

An analog laptop extension. A project by Markus Kison & Christian Wolf A trivial, yet novel and fun use of touchscreen for laptops. Created as an art project.

/Staffan Lincoln - 10/19/2007

This is the latest phone from the Verizon Wireless operator, it is a LG based touch phone with two screens and a full qwerty keyboard. Verizon is selling the phone as the new iPhone killer. Probably not?

/Borgen - 10/5/2007

A dancing mp3-player from Sony. Who would have thought there be a market for something like this.

/Staffan Lincoln - 10/7/2007

So S60 is adding touch! One question about the video and one about the UI. Video: why is the device REALLY still when you see they UI? Is it because the UI is composited in and is actually not at all running on the phone? Then the UI: why do you have to use the stylus?

/Hampus Jakobsson - 10/17/2007