Microsoft Surface Technology: Some Field Observations
Yesterday, I hosted a major transport agency in Atlanta at the Atlanta MTC to demo and showcase Microsoft Surface Technology. Multi-touch based interactivity is already main stream - thanks largely to iPhone and similar handhelds, but it is still amazing to watch the way people respond to the way Surface based applications.
The multi-touch part is cool and all but what really make people truly marvel at this new technology platform is the multi-user and object recognition capabilities of Surface technology. Being able to manipulate portions of user interface while someone else is also using the same application is a new experience for most people. Like I have mentioned in my previous posts, this multi-user capability draws people into genuinely collaborative actions.
While multi-user nature of Surface technology allows for unusual user experiences, the object recognition capability gets people thinking about true power of intelligent ambient systems and how it could solve every day problems around us. With Bluetooth capabilities that allow communication between Surface and devices like mobile phones, the Surface technology gives you a very powerful platform to build business solutions that leverage natural user interface (NUI) and connect them seamlessly to the power of mobile computing.
As a designer, building Surface applications has been a real education though. Mental reflexes trained in building interactions that are triggered by instantaneous events - like click of a button or mouse click – need to be forcibly unlearned as gestural interactions are more dragged out and spread over time. Thanks largely to the very well written document that accompanies the Surface SDK, the process of learning to design for Surface can be more focused and productive. The document lists some core principals - like Seamlessness, Social Orientation, Spatial Orientation, Contextual Environments and Super Realism that are well explained and come handy to bring out the uniqueness of Surface based interactions.
For anyone wanting to learn about Multi-touch devices and how to design for multi-touch devices, one very comprehensive resource is the site put together by Bill Buxton - Multi-Touch Systems that I Have Known and Loved. I have used it extensively in my learning process of designing for Surface Platform.
