Imagine XBMC with Leap…

Ever since the microsoft kinect was hacked to work with non xbox machines, xbmc hackers have been messing or modifying there setups to support gesture control. So popular was the idea of controlling media with gestures, even the BBC adopted this in the Xbox version of iplayer. However the limits of the kinect was being discovered by the XBMC hackers.

After the first rush for controlling media using your whole body, came the idea of using just your arm then finally just the hand. But the Microsoft kinect didn’t have the density to support this. Now leap motion have brought out their own kinect style solution.

XBMC users should love Leapmotion specially with driver support for windows, mac and Linux.

Supporting not only fingers but even pencils and pens too. all the things needed to really make the xbmc interface amazing.

Pictures Under Glass and nothing else

Hands Manipulate things

Can’t believe I’ve not blogged about this epic rant about The Future Of Interaction Design.

Tony highlighted it to me and for once, we were in agreement… The future of interaction design is not glass interfaces and pictures/icons/pictograms under it

Theres some great examples of why pictures under glass doesn’t work…

Okay then, how do we manipulate things? As it turns out, our fingers have an incredibly rich and expressive repertoire, and we improvise from it constantly without the slightest thought. In each of these pictures, pay attention to the positions of all the fingers, what’s applying pressure against what, and how the weight of the object is balanced:

Absolutely the amount of gestures, positions and repertoire fingers can perform is dazzling.

Remember the saying for tricks, the hand is quicker than the eye

So what is the Future Of Interaction?

The most important thing to realize about the future is that it’s a choice. People choose which visions to pursue, people choose which research gets funded, people choose how they will spend their careers.

I could jump in with a rant about how certain companies are limiting choice but I won’t…

I believe that hands are our future…

Absolutely! 3 things pointing at the early future of the interaction…

  1. Printable circuits
  2. Conductive Fabric
  3. Squishy Circuits