Developing Projects

Microsoft User Interfaces of the Future Plus the Soap Mouse

Innovating data input and navigation

By Marius Oiaga, Technology News Editor

5th of November 2007, 12:16 GMT

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Microsoft is building next generation user interfaces, and a soap mouse as the future must have accessory for mobile computers. Remember Play Anywhere? Then how about the more recent Microsoft Surface. That's right, the user interface of Surface is based on the Play Anywhere project from Microsoft Research highlighted in this video dating back to mid 2006. Well, a similar video fragment is now available, this time focusing on three

new UIs under development over at Redmond: InkSeine, LucidTouch and the soap mouse.

Earlier this year, Microsoft unveiled Surface, the Redmond company's first commercial example of surface computing. Based on Windows Vista, Surface allows users to navigate via touch, exemplifying the company's vision of natural interfaces designed to overhaul the now traditional methods of interacting with digital content via a keyboard or a mouse. Of course that Surface is by no means the end of the road in terms of the evolution of user interfaces. As you will be able to see from the video there are three projects over at Microsoft Research working to innovate data input and navigation.

Bill Crounse, Director of Microsoft Worldwide Health, revisits Microsoft Research after he highlighted Play Anywhere in 2006. This time around it's the turn of InkSeine, LucidTouch and the soap mouse. InkSeine is a project that will reinvent user interaction with a tablet PC; you can read more about it, and even watch a video here. LucidTouch is an alternative approach to touch-based interfaces, by taking the actual data input interaction behind the screen.

And of course, last but not least, Microsoft has reinvented the mouse. Just watch all the video with Bill Crounse and towards the end, Patrick Baudisch, the developer working on LucidTouch at Microsoft Research will also demonstrate the soap mouse. Soap "is a combination of a mouse and a mouse pad into a single device," Baudisch revealed. The device works based on a simple mechanism - contrary to the traditional way of interacting with a mouse and a mouse pad, with Soap, it is the mouse pad that is actually moving.

TAGS:

Microsoft | user interfaces | LucidTouch | InkSeine | Soap

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