Multitouch screens of all shapes and forms are really all the rage, but with them come whole new paradigms of interaction. Do you wave like a Wii or do the Minority Report hand swipe popular in many kinds of large-screen set-ups.
Interaction designer, Dan Saffer, who also wrote Designing For Interaction has written a call to arms for interaction designers over at Adaptive Path. He points out some of the issues and dangers if these ideas aren’t documented and resolved. Standards help everyone and sharing knowledge of what you’ve played with, what works and what doesn’t is essential. As Dan says:
And if we wait, well, we’ll simply find individual companies (Apple, Microsoft, Perceptive Pixel, etc. etc.) creating their own standards (as is being done now). And while this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, one can easily imagine having to remember a crazy amount of movements and gestures for common actions. (â€Wait, to turn on the lights do I tap the wall, or wave a hand? Is this an iRoom or MS Rume?â€) We’ll get a lot of ad hoc solutions – some of which will be great, some not so much. Standards and a pattern library would help.
In order to gather this knowledge together in one place, Dan has started an Interactive Gestures Wiki. It’s already interesting to nose around and see just how many gestures and ideas are already out there, but it needs some filling in from us all.