ETech Day 2: The Future of Interfaces is Multi-Touch

Related link: http://mrl.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/

ETech day two starts off with a blast as we watched Jeff Han, a consulting research scientist, give a demonstration of his Multi-Touch display screen. Developed at NYU's Department of Computer Science as a part time project, this display screen allows users to control the computer by touching the screen. Unlike old single point touch-screens that we know now, the multi-touch interface allows the user to touch the screen at multiple points at the same time. Multiple touch points on the screen surface open up a world of possibilities where the user can manipulate objects with multiple fingers, and these can map to many more operations that a single point interface can. This new interface will require rethinking of many of the common user interface concepts that we all take for granted today.

Supporting multiple points at the same time allows the developers to break out of the current UI box and start thinking in new ways. For instance, using this screen with a new desktop system a user can control the desktop using simple hand motions to pan and zoom. With beautiful and smooth graphics we watched as Jeff dragged and zoomed dozens of pictures on a desktop, as if we were watching Apple's Expose features on steroids. If there wasn't enough space on the desktop, simply zoom out and find more space on the edge of the desktop and then move windows there. All done very fast and very smoothly. Wow! Mindblowing!

Jeff went on to show a simulated lava-lamp complete with the customary red blobs. Using his fingers Jeff inserted heat into the lava lamp and the blobs started bouncing about the screen. The audience gasped a collective "Oohhh" and dozen of cameras were whipped out and started snapping shots of the screen. (Not only was this the best lava lamp app I've seen, but with the multi touch interface, it was truly amazing!) Another crowd pleaser was Jeff's demonstration of multiple cable channel video feeds playing in dozens of windows in the desktop -- still zooming and panning smoothly with dozens of videos playing.

Another interesting thing Jeff showed was an on screen keyboard. The keyboard itself was scalable, which drew more oohhhs from the crowd, but Jeff quickly went on to pan the keyboard. This keyboard represents a cheap copy of the trusted keyboard in normal meatspace. Jeff suggests that on-screen keyboards should be taken out of the box and radically innovated, to take advantage of the features of the new input medium.

This demonstration was simply amazing -- all running real-time off one laptop and all designed by grad students. I suggest that you take a look at their video that demonstrates the multi-touch interface.

Normally I'm not so gung ho on new technologies and I tend to be a bit skeptical. But this demo didn't send up any real warning flags for me, so I will continue to watch this space. I want one of these display screens in my office ASAP!

Is this hype or will it be real? What do you think?