UnWatch: As in – something to help stop us looking at our phones when out and about, but without just adding a smaller wrist screen. Unwatch that too. Heads up displayed without another Head Up Display. Let’s kick-start private mobile auditory scenes with subtle controls, raising our eyes and smiles back to one another – awe – yet without skipping a beat in communication and control.
[click for raw concept babble_through video]
[Click link for pic and mp4 collection ]
[click for early signs-of-life demo]
So I’m linking this site to UnWatch kickstarter to share a bit of one-off and two-off background as it relates specifically to the form and experience crafting experience with incubated technologies. One of which is the unwatch mobile auditory display. Behind these concept platform were full blown ideation sessions, technical gap analysis, shipping product surveys, trending hunches, real-world prototyping and in-situ interaction engagement. Typical work for those familiar with using iterative design cycles, ethnographic provocations and directional data. Play with intent.
Of the many man machine interfaces incubated, below are the ones that have matured the UnWatch button/band/bud on-body ensemble.
One-Handed Mobile User Interface
Until it vanishes, it’s not done yet. Way back in 2007, I pitched and technically built out the prospect of a public, subtle phone interface for legitimate unobtrusiveness. Complete with context watch (reworked from CMU), a horrifyingly large Mobile Internet Device (Sony Viao) and a bluetooth bone conducting headset. Many insights and excitement, but didn’t quite have the battery-life nor connectivity to do the concept justice. Regardless, the fully functional experiences and the eat-your-own-dog-food usage logs shed a lot of light on what was then too heavy to fly.
In-Vehicle Optical Interfaces
Adding just a simple button to the overcrowded dashboards of vehicles is a surprising challenging task. How to surface controls that are intuitive and reachable while the eyes and mind are busy. This effort took on that challenge using multi-modal touch/gesture/speech/low-fi HID interface using in-cabin 3D cameras and microphone array. From driving it it seemed to me to be a very powerful paradigm. Adding a ‘peripheral vision only’ HUD pulled it together. I once was pulled over and ended up talking/show-n-telling with the officer for 20 minutes. (still handed me the speeding ticket. Doh!)
This effort really started me thinking through what goes in the hand, what goes in the eyes and definitely has informed the UnWatch experience. I have a cursory mapping of the on-body ensemble to the the cabin and driver objective. The industry considers it a ‘brought-in’ technology that could/should expand/extent the vehicle experience. OK, and when we get back to it, let’s also invert perspectives and label the car a ‘wrap around’.
Electronic Textile Input/Output Rug
large area high-density sensing woven platform with embedded distributed CPUs. Arduino meets mesh networking with Virginia Tech. I was extremely impresses with the professors and the technologies behind woven electronics. So much so that we build a 3ftx8ft sensing rug targeting everything from high fidelity indoor tacking, aging-in-place carpets, and upholstery. Within this effort was the first look at wearables for flexible/comfortable sensing. I personally think we need to re-invent the loom. It’s not just 3D printing and laser cuts. It’s personal weaving well beyond these patch worked seamie, no-size fits anyone clothes we shove ourselves into. It can actually flow with the body and weave its own electronic button that moves like and with the skin. In addition to the electronic textile component, the gate tacking and modeling techniques embedded in the distributed micro-controllers in the rug have been reworked to dampen gate patterns picked up on UnWatch.
3D Interactive Displays
The light bulb continues to move through its technology inflection point of low power, low heat, instant on, long life, digitally enabled even digital transmission. Projectors and 3D cameras are going along for that ride to make interactive displays. Having been hands-on technical lead for 2D and 3D versions of these, I’ve been able to re-purpose the touch/image/surface calibration techniques for the UnWatch effort for personalizing the fashion patch and ear bud sizes. Nothing new. People have been taking pictures of ears for sizing earbuds and panorama view for sizing clothes. So we apply this here as well. There are a few tricky parts to this, but seem to be ready for prime time.
Dual Touchpanel laptop
Full size touch panel keyboard typing, true screen rest, 5 finger and palm hotkey gestures, track pad keyboard overlays. This is interesting if done well and building/playing with these generated beautiful ideas still not seen at BestBuy. One compelling realization that took me weeks to implement ended up getting buried in the launch of this product, It was the ‘gesture knob’. np. That ah-hah moment when I put 5 fingers on the screen to ‘dial’ a position has carried over into the knob concept that controls the auditory display in UnWatch. It’s not a gesture, it’s a grab/turn of a doorknob. It induces a muscle memory that can become very accurate – like finding the frets on a guitar or keyboard and then just the notes on the violin. Once felt, the musician then plays the UnWatch display. Hah. Crazy. Let’s build.
Contact
David Lewis Graumann 