Make It Multi-Touch
Paul Lacey, Ideum, USA
Jim Spadaccini, Ideum, USA
Multi-touch and multi-user exhibits have the potential to fundamentally change ways in which visitors interact with computer-based exhibits in museums. Through the use of intuitive gestures, visitors are saved from the need to learn graphic tools or figure out how to activate responses. These exhibits allow designers to move away from traditional graphical user interfaces and toward a set of more natural and intuitive controls.
With the popularity of the iPhone, and the release of the first commercially available multi-touch-capable PCs, this technology is moving from the experimental to the mainstream. This major change presents exhibit developers with new design challenges. Soon the work of Web developers will be impacted by the advent of multi-touch, as well.
In this full-day workshop, we'll explore a variety of multi-touch technologies including off-the-shelf multi-touch-enabled PCs along with a look under the hood of a custom-built 50" touch-table. Participants will see a variety of examples and prototypes, including many that use Web-based technologies. We'll see how multi-touch technology is used to browse multimedia elements, RSS Feeds, mapping services, and other Web-based applications and mash-ups.
Finally, we'll explore the design challenges multi-touch and multi-user exhibits present. We'll examine some traditional computer-based exhibits and conceptualize how they might be designed differently with multi-touch and collaborative capabilities in mind. Through rapid design exercises we'll explore and discuss the conceptual, informational, and user-interface aspects of multi-touch and multi-user design.
Workshop: Multi-Touch [Full Day]
Keywords: multi-touch, multitouch, design, usability, user interface, gesture recognition, visitor experience, mashup, RSS
