14 DAY TRIAL // The winning projects of the UIST Student Innovation Contest are amazing examples of the kind of innovation that can be built on top of the Microsoft Touch Mouse.
Prizes were offered for the following categories: most creative, most useful and best implemented. You will find a collection of links at the bottom of this article, to videos of the winning prototypes.
According to the official site for the contest, winners in each category received $1,500 while runner-ups were awarded $500.
“I knew it was going to be a great contest; creative students paired with Microsoft hardware is always a recipe for something exciting,” revealed Chris Harrison, a judge from Carnegie Mellon University.
“Ideas ranged from funky to functional. We had snails with multitouch antennas for feeling out food all the way to mice that can sense who you are.”
Students managed to use the Microsoft Touch Mouse to do everything from controlling snail antennas to allowing users to sign into their machines using unique touch patterns.
Additional work was done to transform the mouse into a tool to easily manipulate windows, into a music instrument, game controller, a sheep and an elephant (I know, right!), and even a tool to control a massage mat.
“Microsoft Hardware, Microsoft Research and the Applied Sciences groups supplied each student with a Touch Mouse customized specifically for the contest, as well as exclusive access to the Touch Mouse API for visibility of the real-time sensor information from the mouse’s touch sensor,” added Hrvoje Benko, Microsoft Researcher.
“The teams were challenged to: experiment and combine the Touch Mouse with other devices and sensors; get creative and write new applications for the Touch Mouse; and demonstrate “outside the box” thinking using a tool that we use in our daily lives, in unique and different ways.”
Here are the winners:
Most Creative: Wellesley College, Mass. (TUI.TAR), and Claremont College, Calif. (FlipMouse)
Most Useful: Carnegie Mellon University, Pa. (Window Manipulation), and Wellesley College, Mass. (Where’s Bo Peep?)
Best Implemented: IT University of Copenhagen (Toki D.I.Y. Tookit), and UC Berkley (The Mossage Mat)
People’s Choice: Snail Interface and Grip to Identify.