Multi-Point Interactions

by February 11, 2006

Two recent examples of multiple point interactions have been making the rounds online. The first is a video of Jeff Han’s Multi-Touch Interaction Research.

“multi-touch sensing enables a user to interact with a system with more than one finger at a time, as in chording and bi-manual operations. Such sensing devices are inherently also able to accommodate multiple users simultaneously, which is especially useful for larger interaction scenarios such as interactive walls and tabletops.” -Multi-Touch Interaction Research

A few interactive walls and tables were on display at SIGGRPAH last year and Nicolas Nova list almost 60 such tables.

The second example is Apple’s virtual scroll wheel interface patent -rumored to be implemented in the new video iPod.

“Here two virtual touch wheels appear on the screen allowing independent action- the left hand has one finger on the volume and one on the smaller virtual scroll wheel allowing volume control and playlist selection, at the same time the right hand is scrolling through available songs in the iTunes right hand pane.” –Touch Sensitive iPod

It’s not a Minority Report interface yet but…