Beyond Type #2

Why did I do this?

Getting to know the Medium.

Medium properties

The Hardware that was used is called AVRTouch Version 2.1 and was developed by Guanfu Wang. The PCB hosts an Atmel32 MPU, 320x240 LCD Touch Screen, a Micro SD-Card Slot and a attachable Omnivision CMOS camera. The Eclipse Cpp IDE was used to compile and uploading over the serial line. The touch driver was not included, so I had to program one. The camera has very limited use, because the limited speed and memory of the Atmel chip. However you can initialize the cam and route the data directly to the lcd showing the captured images in realtime.

Results

A hybrid interaction mechanism idea came out of the experimentations with simple graphics and resistive touch. The Circle is 'grabbing / accepting' letters with each ring and it speeds up if you speed up with writing. Visualizing the input field like that might integrate better in tabletop or public display environments than typical keypad and text field widgets. At the same time, follow up users get a 'fresh' area to write on. Traces like the pixel artefacts left when a new ring goes over a stroke can indicate recent use of the display and might disappear after time. Also the real estate of the ring is rather small and multipe might allow more users at the same time.