October 21, 2008
New Ways That Your Cell Phone Could 'Talk' to You
What if, instead of vibrating, your cell phone simply tapped your hand or leg? And would you perceive a game controller that rubbed your hand to be a good thing? PC Magazine reports.
At the User Interface Software and Technology conference this week, Microsoft Research will present a number of papers discussing improvements in how users interact with computers.
One of these will be a paper primarily authored by Kevin Li of U.C. San Diego, with Patrick Baudisch of Microsoft and other researchers from UCSD and Cognitive Science.
As the paper notes, portable devices usually signal their users through vibration, whether it be the "rumble" feature built into a game controller, or the vibration of a portable phone. The authors of the paper experimented with two additional methods of transmitting information: moving a small ball or nub back and forth to simulate a rubbing motion; and using a similar method to simulate tapping on a user's hand or finger. In both cases, the voice coil motor of a standard hard drive was used, as part of a technology the paper's authors dubbed "soundTouch".
Read full article.
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2008/10/021520.htm