14 DAY TRIAL // At the start of September 2010, Microsoft unveiled the Arc Touch Mouse officially, after details of the device had already made their way into the wild, having been leaked by a German online retail shop. With the launch of the Arc Touch Mouse website, the Redmond company also provided users with a video introducing the father of the new peripheral.
Young Kim is Senior User Experience Designer for the Microsoft hardware Group, and the man behind the Arc Touch Mouse.
Users can watch the video embedded at the bottom of this article, in order to hear Kim speak about his experience with building the new touch flavor of the Arc Mouse.
“Developing the new Arc Touch Mouse was the culmination of a lot of hard work from the multi-disciplinary team at the Hardware Group and I am excited to show you the role my team in Industrial Design had in creating the final product,” he stated.
“The focus of the mouse was to meet the needs of our customers’ mobile lifestyles; our user research showed that our customers wanted a mouse with a very small form factor so it was easy to take with them, but yet still large enough to be comfortable and help them get their work done.”
According to Kim, the process of developing the new peripheral involved more than 50 prototypes.
The Arc Touch Mouse combines various technologies from Microsoft, including a touch input strip designed to replace the old scroll wheel and BlueTrack, which allows customers to use the device on almost all surfaces, unlike traditional mice.
The Arc Touch Mouse is already available for pre-order from multiple online retailers, including Amazon.com, Buy.com and BestBuy.com.
Microsoft will only ship the device in December 2010, and already announced that it will feature a price tag of $69.95.