Ramon Ecung's Personal Blog

I’ve been getting more and more interested in haptic computing and how users can gain more usability through multi-sensory computing interfaces. That sounds pretty complicated, but really it just means users of technology can gain productivity using more senses than just vision, touch, and sound (via the a display device, input device, and speaker; ex: monitor and keyboard/mouse).

There are two areas of integrating “non-normal” computing senses in a computing environment: entertainment and productivity. Entertainment focuses on providing a more enjoyable user interface and may or may not provide any tangible or quantifiable benefit. Possible examples of the entertainment area are fans placed on either side of a computer monitor that are activated when the user plays a game to mimic in-game conditions, and using 3D glasses to enhance the vision sense and create a dynamic 3-dimensional environment.

The productivity area focuses on actually providing mechanisms that stimulate senses that provide measurable and quantifiable increases in an arbitrary benefit.  This can mean a user may require fewer keystrokes to perform the same task because of the way the information is presented, or simply that more information is presented to the user at once. Windows Vista has native support for an implementation of such a technology called SideShow which allows an external LCD display to be attached to a computer and display information such as weather, traffic, CPU/RAM usage, and other information that the user would normally have to look up manually. Of course, this is a limited usage of the main concept, but it is a step in the right direction.

I believe with devices such as the iPhone and technologies such as Compiz/Aero/Quartz exceed in providing a more engaging and dynamic experience that is not only visually apealing, but useful as well. This is a starting point that uses current technology (accelerated 3D graphics cards and clever programming), but there is a capacity for much more information to be passed from a computing device to the user that what is currently being used.