R Sloan Design Experiences » user experience

Toyota Fun-Vii concept car is like a “smartphone on 4 wheels”

R Sloan Design — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 18:58:22 +0000

COMMENT: …why not.

It’s been a long time since a concept car has really sparked the
imagination of tech geeks and car enthusiasts alike. When Toyota
unveiled their latest concept car, the Fun-Vii, at the 2011 Tokyo Motor
Show this week, everyone from Automobile Magazine to Mashable jumped in to discuss its proposed paradigm-shifting features.

It’s clear what the “Fun” part of the name means just by watching the
second video below. The “Vii” stands for Vehicle, Interactive,
Internet. Inside and out, most aspects of the car can interact with the
internet and be controlled by a smartphone. Most surfaces on and within
the vehicle are giant touchscreens that can be adjusted to the whims of
the driver, including color changes, graphics, and interactive surfaces.

Did we mention that the car will be able to drive itself? Through
wireless connections that interact with other vehicles as well as the
infrastructure of its surroundings, the vehicle can go “hands free” from
point to point (in theory, at least). While in “Auto Drive” mode, the
augmented reality interface includes a virtual concierge. Note in the
second video how the helpful female concierge is “upgraded” to a
less-clothed variation (stay classy, Toyota!).

At 13-feet long, the small 3-seater won’t be a family-hauler.

Toyota has no plans to produce the vehicle anytime soon, but the
concepts and technology that it represents will likely find its way into
production vehicles in the coming years.

Here are two videos, first of the unveiling of the vehicle than the
promotional visualization of what the vehicle would represent in a
Utopian society. More images of the vehicle are below the videos.

Monday Enhancement: Disappearing Hardware |

R Sloan Design — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 05:44:00 +0000

by Katie Shelly

Lots of designers are using video simulations or video prototypes to develop ideas that aren’t yet possible. Some of the most fun ideas imagine a digital world in which our hardware devices shrink, dissolve, or vanish altogether.

This animation from Keiichi Matsuda shows a futuristic lifestyle full of data but devoid of devices. According to Matsuda,

Augmented reality is an emerging technology defined by its ability to overlay physical space with information…. It may lead to a world where media is indistinguishable from ‘reality.’ The spatial organization of data has important implications for architecture, as we reevaluate the city as an immersive human-computer interface.

There’s also Julia Tsao’s “Curious Displays,” a product proposal for a new kind of display technology. Tsao says,

The display surface is instead broken up into hundreds of ½-inch display blocks. Each block operates independently as a self-contained unit, and has full mobility, allowing movement across any physical surface…. The blocks become a physical embodiment of digital media, and act as a vehicle for the physical manifestation of what typically exists only in the virtual space of the screen.

Monday Enhancements is a weekly series on interaction design and augmented reality.

BumpTop 3-D Multitouch Desktop Software Maker BumpTop

R Sloan Design — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 05:05:00 +0000

THOUGHTS: Old news…still cool. Desk size please.

by Dan Nosowitz

BumpTop is a desktop replacement, used by both Windows and Mac–HP’s convertible tablet computers like the TM2 use BumpTop as an easy way to make your computer’s desktop more touchable. It turns files, folders, and software shortcuts into icons that can be manipulated more directly with fingers. For example, you might have a photo on your desktop. To post it on Twitter, you’d simply tap on the photo and fling it into the Twitter icon shortcut on the side of the screen. Here’s a walkthrough of how BumpTop works:

It’s one of the better implementations of a touchscreen desktop I’ve seen. It’s easy to use, though not all of its gestures and features are immediately obvious, and certainly feels more natural than trying to navigate a stock Windows 7 desktop.

Google‘s purchase was rumored at first (BumpTop posted an announcement that the product would shortly become unavailable as it will be going “in an exciting new direction”), and later confirmed by TechCrunch. It’s a very evocative purchase; you can see just how useful it would be to Google, which has leapt into touch-based technologies but isn’t exactly a master of touch-based interfaces.

So, what might Google do with BumpTop? I think it’s safe to rule out Chrome OS as an eventual landing place–Chrome OS will likely still rely on a keyboard and mouse, and will regardless focus more on the browser than on file management. Nor do I think it’s likely to be offered as a standalone. BumpTop is likely due for Android, and more specifically for Android tablets.

Most upcoming tablets will be looking to Android (with the possible/hopeful exception of HP, which may come out with a WebOS tablet). But on a bigger screen, Android’s rough edges are pretty obvious. A skin, like HTC’s Sense or Dell’s Stage, is one option, but BumpTop might be a better solution. It’ll need some tweaking (it doesn’t have any of Android’s hallmark and completely essential UI features, like the notification shade or app drawer) but it has the potential to offer something really different for an Android tablet.