Interfaces
| inFORM is a Dynamic Shape Display that can render 3D content physically, so users can interact with digital information in a tangible way. inFORM can also interact with the physical world around it, for example moving objects on the table’s surface. Remote participants in a video conference can be displayed physically, allowing for a strong sense of presence and the ability to interact physically at a distance. |
At the MIT Media Lab, the Tangible Media Group believes the future of computing is tactile. Unveiled recently, the inFORM is MIT's new scrying pool for imagining the interfaces of tomorrow.
Akin to a large scale form of nano cloudlets, the inFORM is a surface that three-dimensionally changes shape, allowing users to not only interact with digital content iphysically, but even hold hands with a person hundreds of miles away. And that's only the beginning.
Created by Daniel Leithinger and Sean Follmer and overseen by Professor Hiroshi Ishii, the technology behind the inFORM isn't that hard to understand. It's basically a fancy Pinscreen, one of those executive desk toys that allows you to create a rough 3D model of an object by pressing it into a bed of flattened pins.
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"Right now, the things designers can create with graphics are more powerful and flexible than in hardware," Leithinger told Co.Design. "The result is our gadgets have been consumed by the screen and become indistinguishable black rectangles with barely any physical controls. That's why BlackBerry is dying."
Moving beyond the simulated affordances of tablets and today's smartphones is what the researchers are working towards. Follmer says, "As humans, we have evolved to interact physically with our environments, but in the 21st century, we're missing out on all of this tactile sensation that is meant to guide us, limit us, and make us feel more connected," he says. "In the transition to purely digital interfaces, something profound has been lost."
"Ten years ago, we had people at Media Lab working on gestural interactions, and now they're everywhere, from the Microsoft Kinect to the Nintendo Wiimote," says Follmer. "Whatever it ends up looking like, the UI of the future won't be made of just pixels, but time and form as well. And that future is only five or ten years away. It's time for designers to start thinking about what that means now."
Imagine empty rooms with inFORM as the floor. Such a space could conceivably be morphed into countless configurations, and combined with augmented reality and virtual reality could create an immersive physical and digital environment.
SOURCE Fast Company
"Ten years ago, we had people at Media Lab working on gestural interactions, and now they're everywhere, from the Microsoft Kinect to the Nintendo Wiimote," says Follmer. "Whatever it ends up looking like, the UI of the future won't be made of just pixels, but time and form as well. And that future is only five or ten years away. It's time for designers to start thinking about what that means now."
Imagine empty rooms with inFORM as the floor. Such a space could conceivably be morphed into countless configurations, and combined with augmented reality and virtual reality could create an immersive physical and digital environment.
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