Future smart watch interaction?

The Future Interfaces Group (FIG) is an interdisciplinary research laboratory within the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. They create new sensing and interface technologies that aim to make interactions between humans and computers more fluid, intuitive, and powerful. These efforts often lie in emerging use modalities, such as mobile computing, touch interfaces and gestural interaction. FIG already made some impressive interfaces which could become the interfaces of the future. What to think about Air+Touch: Interweaving Touch & In-Air Gestures or Toffee: Enabling Ad Hoc, Around-Device Interaction with Acoustic Time-of-Arrival Correlation. Have a look at their website for more information about the several projects they are doing.

One we found very interesting is Skin Buttons. This is interesting because of the introduction of smart watches. Skin buttons are tiny laser projectors integrated into the smart watch to render icons on the user’s skin. These icons can be made touch sensitive, significantly expanding the interactive region without increasing device size. We show a proof-of-concept device and demonstrate example applications. These “skin buttons” can have high touch accuracy and recognizability, while being low cost and power-efficient.”

Will this be the future of interaction? We will keep a close look at the developments.