Physical gesture based dialing
By Eddie Lopez. Thursday, 11. June 2009, 18:57:09
Way back in 2002, I found a little web browser called Opera that had this feature that just blew me out of the water...mouse gestures.
Since I've become to rely on them for browsing, I'm also looking at all the other plugins and extensions that extend this functionality to other pieces of software and interfaces.
Phones now have accelerometers that detect 3D movement, so it seems natural to use movement and gestures to perform functions on the phone.
I've just viewed the video for this phonepoint pen project by Duke students that uses the movement to translate and do OCR on captured movement to text. I think this is interesting, but not very practical. Instead, I'd like to capture the movement and translate them directly to commands. Keeping with the Opera browser mindset, I'm picturing a handful of easy to perform gestures that are one or two linear movements that can be turned into key phone functionality. Apple is tapping into this idea, they just announced "voice control" and they have a handful of physical based gestures- but they are just on the tip of the iceberg: they have "shake to undo" or "shake to refresh" functionality, but this can be extended...
But mainly things you'd be likely to in an automobile or need to get at frequently and quickly...what I like about gestures, is that you can do them without paying attention to the interface- there's no mental/cognitive cycles spent doing mundane interface manipulation. You're using muscle memory. Like my browser mouse gestures, I can still be in the middle of finishing up scanning the text of the page and close the page without any movement to the "x" button (or any real thought). at the sake of going off on my mouse gesture tangent, I'll leave it at "if you get it, you get it, if not, you don't" and just press on: On the mobile device, this opportunity is greater. I think this is easier to use than even physical speed dial buttons since you'll have to orient your hand to the phone and find the right button. With a physical gesture, you can find a single "activate" button (which would be consistent for all gestures of course) and then just let your muscle memory do the flailing!
I can think of some contexts & settings where voice controlling would be more appropriate, and I can certainly think of times when it would be more discrete to swipe your phone quietly through the air.
Anyway, I'm almost certain that someone already has some form of this out that goes beyond the "shake to X" functionality, so I suppose I should just wait patiently for someone to point it out in the comments. I've seen the speed dialer app that lets you make a gesture on the screen of the iPhone to dial someone, but that has none of the advantages of abstracted UI that I mentioned.
Since I've become to rely on them for browsing, I'm also looking at all the other plugins and extensions that extend this functionality to other pieces of software and interfaces.
Phones now have accelerometers that detect 3D movement, so it seems natural to use movement and gestures to perform functions on the phone.
I've just viewed the video for this phonepoint pen project by Duke students that uses the movement to translate and do OCR on captured movement to text. I think this is interesting, but not very practical. Instead, I'd like to capture the movement and translate them directly to commands. Keeping with the Opera browser mindset, I'm picturing a handful of easy to perform gestures that are one or two linear movements that can be turned into key phone functionality. Apple is tapping into this idea, they just announced "voice control" and they have a handful of physical based gestures- but they are just on the tip of the iceberg: they have "shake to undo" or "shake to refresh" functionality, but this can be extended...
- Speed Dialing a phone number (one gesture for each favorite contact)
- Launching a browser
- Initiate a desktop-to-mobile sync/handshake
- Move data from phone to desktop
- Copy, paste, delete, add...
- Refreshing the current view (existing)
- Shake to undo (exsiting)
- launch maps and use current location (ideal for auto based "where am I?" queries)
But mainly things you'd be likely to in an automobile or need to get at frequently and quickly...what I like about gestures, is that you can do them without paying attention to the interface- there's no mental/cognitive cycles spent doing mundane interface manipulation. You're using muscle memory. Like my browser mouse gestures, I can still be in the middle of finishing up scanning the text of the page and close the page without any movement to the "x" button (or any real thought). at the sake of going off on my mouse gesture tangent, I'll leave it at "if you get it, you get it, if not, you don't" and just press on: On the mobile device, this opportunity is greater. I think this is easier to use than even physical speed dial buttons since you'll have to orient your hand to the phone and find the right button. With a physical gesture, you can find a single "activate" button (which would be consistent for all gestures of course) and then just let your muscle memory do the flailing!
I can think of some contexts & settings where voice controlling would be more appropriate, and I can certainly think of times when it would be more discrete to swipe your phone quietly through the air.
Anyway, I'm almost certain that someone already has some form of this out that goes beyond the "shake to X" functionality, so I suppose I should just wait patiently for someone to point it out in the comments. I've seen the speed dialer app that lets you make a gesture on the screen of the iPhone to dial someone, but that has none of the advantages of abstracted UI that I mentioned.
WIDGETIZE