Task 5: IT Trends
Human interface with computers has evolved from punchcards, to keyboards with text based visual feedback, to keyboards and mice with graphical feedback. With the Nintendo Wii game console, human interface with electronics completely changed. Suddenly your movement and gestures, through Wiimote controllers with accelerometers, gyroscopes, and inferred cameras, could be replicated by a game character. A few years later Microsoft upped the ante with Kinect, a camera based system that makes your entire body the controller.
Innovative computer programmers have connected these new controllers to computers to challenge how we think about interacting with computers. One such programmer, Johnny Lee, connected a Wiimote to his computer and reversed the way a Wimmote is typically used to create a head tracking virtual reality interface. This modification creates the illusion of greater immersion in a game. Applying some of the same tracking concepts, Johnny Lee also used the Wiimote technology to create a low cost multi-touch display.
The Microsoft Kinect uses of the same concepts around capturing movement, but uses multiple cameras to track the human body, rather than inferred LEDs. This technology elliminates the need for controllers as the body is the controller. MIT students, and software companies have applied the new technology to existing computers, allowing users to interact with their computers without a keyboard or mouse.
Such gesture based interfaces make science fiction computer interfaces, like those seen in Minority Report, closer to science fact.
As these technologies evolve, becoming more intuitive, responsive, and efficient, we will see them creep into everyday computing, much like the multi-touch and swipe interface did with smartphones and tablet computers. If these technologies become as polished as touch technologies have, the learning curve should be fairly small.