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TacTables offer a glimpse into a socially-interfaced future
(Cross-posted on the EchoDitto blog.)
Last Friday, we went on an office field trip to explore the tactile-interface technology developed by a local company called TacTable. Located in Cambridge a few minutes from the EchoDitto office and in business since 2001, they are pioneers in the field of interactive, tactile, multi-touch, social interfaces. Their demo TacTable, made of wood and about the size of a ping-pong table, contains a PC running Windows XP and a thick translucent glass cover, under which invisible projectors and wide-angle cameras create the image and detect contact. Distance sensors around the table add user awareness, and speakers somewhere in the mix add sound.
The interface is extremely intuitive. On an exhibit made for Sprint's flagship store, users tap on floating "orbs" or place uniquely marked coasters on the table to open games, music, or video clips. Tapping a music orb opens albums which can be dragged, rotated or thrown around the table. Tap the controls and music starts playing, mixed into whatever everyone else around the table is playing. To emphasize the social experience, the table won't help you politely ask the person across from you to pause their music - you have to do that the old-fashioned way. Tap an envelope floating around and a cartoonish keyboard pops out to write an email. A DJ orb lets you spin tracks on a virtual turntable.
TacTables are perfect for museums. The company's first product was a vertical "touchwall" for the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry in 2001, and an 18-foot "open ocean" wall operates in the Georgia Aquarium. On one exhibit, you roll a high-resolution scroll of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics across the table and translations and stories pop out. On another, you can clutter the table with colonial-era legal documents, as John Adams might have done, and read about the Puritans banning Christmas or about the Constitution. The possibilities seem endless, and one gets the sense that every computer in a few years will work like this.
The company fully expects that, in fact, which is why they emphasize their expertise in interface design - creating what they call "socially engaging multi-user experiences in public spaces" - over the "invisible" technology inside the tables, which already faces competition from huge players like Microsoft (with its Surface). "In theory," they suggest, "we could still create experiences using MS Surface as well." The particular technology they've developed becomes incidental; their hope is that "people will remember whether they enjoyed using the table because it was fun, aesthetic, and intuitive (and perhaps even magical)."
Of course, the prospect of every tabletop becoming a digital interface has its drawbacks. As a parody of MS Surface advertises to bar-hoppers moving tumblers around their digital table, "instead of interacting with actual human beings, you could just order the food right at your table." Like self-checkout kiosks at supermarkets, the thrill of gee-wiz interfaces and the desire to cut labor costs could produce some unfortunate gimmicks. But there's no doubt this kind of interface is going to be huge in a few years. The more I think about it, the more the single-point mouse cursor still used in every standard operating system seems very old-school. The iPhone figured this out for handheld devices (and created standards which people now expect for similar products), so it's only a matter of time before every flat screen has this kind of social, interactive potential built in, and TacTable is well positioned to take advantage of that trend.
Last Friday, we went on an office field trip to explore the tactile-interface technology developed by a local company called TacTable. Located in Cambridge a few minutes from the EchoDitto office and in business since 2001, they are pioneers in the field of interactive, tactile, multi-touch, social interfaces. Their demo TacTable, made of wood and about the size of a ping-pong table, contains a PC running Windows XP and a thick translucent glass cover, under which invisible projectors and wide-angle cameras create the image and detect contact. Distance sensors around the table add user awareness, and speakers somewhere in the mix add sound.The interface is extremely intuitive. On an exhibit made for Sprint's flagship store, users tap on floating "orbs" or place uniquely marked coasters on the table to open games, music, or video clips. Tapping a music orb opens albums which can be dragged, rotated or thrown around the table. Tap the controls and music starts playing, mixed into whatever everyone else around the table is playing. To emphasize the social experience, the table won't help you politely ask the person across from you to pause their music - you have to do that the old-fashioned way. Tap an envelope floating around and a cartoonish keyboard pops out to write an email. A DJ orb lets you spin tracks on a virtual turntable.
TacTables are perfect for museums. The company's first product was a vertical "touchwall" for the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry in 2001, and an 18-foot "open ocean" wall operates in the Georgia Aquarium. On one exhibit, you roll a high-resolution scroll of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics across the table and translations and stories pop out. On another, you can clutter the table with colonial-era legal documents, as John Adams might have done, and read about the Puritans banning Christmas or about the Constitution. The possibilities seem endless, and one gets the sense that every computer in a few years will work like this.The company fully expects that, in fact, which is why they emphasize their expertise in interface design - creating what they call "socially engaging multi-user experiences in public spaces" - over the "invisible" technology inside the tables, which already faces competition from huge players like Microsoft (with its Surface). "In theory," they suggest, "we could still create experiences using MS Surface as well." The particular technology they've developed becomes incidental; their hope is that "people will remember whether they enjoyed using the table because it was fun, aesthetic, and intuitive (and perhaps even magical)."
Of course, the prospect of every tabletop becoming a digital interface has its drawbacks. As a parody of MS Surface advertises to bar-hoppers moving tumblers around their digital table, "instead of interacting with actual human beings, you could just order the food right at your table." Like self-checkout kiosks at supermarkets, the thrill of gee-wiz interfaces and the desire to cut labor costs could produce some unfortunate gimmicks. But there's no doubt this kind of interface is going to be huge in a few years. The more I think about it, the more the single-point mouse cursor still used in every standard operating system seems very old-school. The iPhone figured this out for handheld devices (and created standards which people now expect for similar products), so it's only a matter of time before every flat screen has this kind of social, interactive potential built in, and TacTable is well positioned to take advantage of that trend.