use all your fingers
multi-touch!

Heard about those home-made multi-touch screens using infrared LEDs? We did it

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magnet v0

I finished the first prototype implementation of magnet, a generic tool to visualize coherences/similarities between enities of any data set.

» user test & more info »

sign selector

While testing some ideas for a jukebox application for my “media center” computer, I came to a point, where the user should be able to select an interpret or song from a huge list. If he knew the exact name, scrolling through a sorted list should be ok, but still a way to narrow the list by typing some initial letters would be much faster and convinient. This should not be difficult on a thouch screen, but as I also wanted  this application to work on mouse-only devices, as a keyboard was for example too space consuming in my configuration. So I ended up trying to find an interface component, allowing an user to enter a view letters with a pointing device like a mouse or a track ball.

It is basically a pop-out technique, but making use of moving the mouse pointer in two dimensions, than the common linear approach. Operatiing this first prototype version on the left is still a little rough though.

Aquaris – three teams, two payers each, custom-built game controller

Aquaris is a game dedicated to teach and inform about renewable energy technologies and energy-saving measures to children of the fourth grade. Aquaris was intended to be set up in a small museum,owned by an electricity producing company. Private guided tours about the topic mentioned before where offered for whole fourth grade classes at once.
For those reasons, three requirements were defined:

facts

• easy to learn game flow, due to minimal complexity of gameplay
• easy to use, custom made controller
• a whole class of up to 30 children can play within one hour
• children learn in a playful way as knowledge pays off in our game
• to cope with minor reading problems, mostly audio is used instead of text

advantages of the controller built at a glance

click to see a 3D animation about placement and function of the controllers

• form follows function: the cursor on the screen follows one to one the controller handle
• no button functions need to be learned, all interactions necessary to play the game can be performed moving the handle
• each controller device is placed accordingly to its cursor on the screen
• very precise
• only needs to be calibrated once at setup time
• no influences of environment

Or click here to see a low quality (1mb) 3D animation version.

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