No, I’ve not started writing self-help (although I hear there’s good money in that), I’m talking about HCI. That’s Human Computer Interaction, and to most of us, that broadly ranges from mice and keyboards to our favourite game controllers. We’ve come a long way from the blinking command prompt, and we’re now firmly entrenched in the realm of the GUI (quite wonderfully pronounced ‘gooey’, standing for Graphical User Interface) but where do we go from here?
Now, I’m in quite a privileged and unusual position when it comes to commentary on HCI – I’m currently in gainful employ as a software developer. Specifically, I write front-end interface software (and back-end mechanics) for a company who manufacture touch screen terminals, and as well as writing the software, part of my job involves researching technologies currently on the market and what is coming next. In the world of the touch screen, the two big technologies are capacitive (the fleshy bit of your finger conducts a small electric current to designate the touched point on the screen, as on most public space touch screen terminals, and the iPhone) and infra-red (where a series of ‘cameras’ triangulate the information about where the screen is being touched). Both are relatively accurate and both last a long time – the major difference is that capacitive can only read one point of contact at a time, but IR can be configured for multiple touch points.
Now, capacitive is something we’re all familiar with – railway stations, airports, cinemas, gaming machines in bookmakers and bars – we see these machines all over the world, and they are creeping into the home market on the iPhone. IR multi-touch is newer and less widespread, and while the technology can be knocked out fairly cheaply in a home-brew environment, it’s not as straightforward to setup and is less likely to invade the home market – so here are some videos so you can see the cool (but ultimately quite pointless and gimmicky) things that IR multi-touch is used for:
Most of the touch screen devices we operate around the home and in work environments are based on resistive technology. Basically, the screen recognises where the press is coming from by a change in pressure. This is how your PDA or your touch screen tablet PC works, and as you’re well aware, the only real way to use this properly is with a stylus – if you try and do it any other way it is less accurate and more jumpy (resistive touch requires the smallest point possible for greatest accuracy, and anybody who has ever lost their PDA’s stylus will tell you that learning to use a fingernail in its place is a nightmare).
The Nintendo DS is the best example of resistive touch screen for the gaming market, and lets be honest – we all love it. It’s simple, it’s gratifying, and it opens up the entire concept of gaming to new ideas and new ways to play. Nintendo are obviously committed to developing new ways to play (or are clinically insane, I’m yet to decide for certain) because not content with having us touching our games, they’ve now got us waving our arms in the air with the Wii. I thought the DS was brilliant – it opens up strategy games that normally port very badly from the PC when there is no mouse available, and also brings in a multitude of new ways to play – but I was more cynical about the Wii. I hold my hands up and admit that I thought twin analog sticks had emerged as head-and-shoulders above all other console control methods as the way to play, and would never be toppled. I saw people playing things like Wario Ware: Smooth Moves and Trauma Centre and thought it was fun for five minutes on mini-games, but ultimately pointless gimmickry (like the IR touch devices). Then I saw what Nintendo had in mind, and my opinion was forever changed. I saw Wii Sports and playing tennis in such a natural way seemed like a revelation to me. I saw The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and someone with their nunchuck hand wielding a shield, remote hand slashing a sword, and I thought it was genius. I couldn’t understand why nobody had thought of it before. Now the Wii control method is second nature to me, and while it is amazing and will be around for a very long time as the most fun way to play, I am already wondering about what might come next.
Touch screen is out from a gaming point of view, I think, as it requires you to be within arms reach of the screen at all times. This is firstly very bad for your eyes, potentially very bad for your tv (if you get over-zealous and knock it over) and very bad for your social life, as it’s hard to cram several players comfortably in that small a space. If games do go down that route, we will ultimately end up playing table-top games like the old Space Invaders machines and that would be a big step back.
Virtual reality never really worked. It promised so much, but always looked pretty naff. As technology improves I’m sure it will become a more dominant way to play, but the amount of hardware required and the cost of producing it will always be prohibitive.
I was interested then, when a few weeks ago I saw an article on the BBC website’s technology section about a helmet that ‘reads your thoughts’ to control gameplay. I opened the article, sceptical and pessimistic, but was impressed with what I saw. It is a device being developed by a company called Emotiv Systems in San Francisco, and the helmet is called the ‘Epoc’. It looks pretty foolish (like an ‘Orgasmatron’, those novelty head massage devices you can buy from gadget shops) but the developers claim that it reads the electrical impulses sent by the brain every time we think about doing something. Bold claims, and early tests do show some degree of effectiveness, but the system is based on something called ‘fuzzy logic’, a programming term that basically means that the software ‘best guesses’ what you’re intending. When using handwriting recognition software, the program approximates what shape you have drawn and tries to match it as closely as possible within a degree of error to what letters it could be, and then (if it’s more intelligent software) looks at what letters proceeded it to see if it’s best guess actually forms a word, and if not, tries its second best guess, and so on. There is a learning curve to this and anybody who has ever tried to write a memo into an old Newton PDA will know that it often goes awry, but if Emotiv get it right, it will be the beginning of the revolution.
I couldn’t find the original BBC article on the ‘Epoc’, but you can read more about it here:
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/gadgets_and_gaming/article2926810.ece
Nintendo have opened the floodgates, first with the DS and then the Wii, and while I’m excited about other technologies coming from various other places, I can’t help but feel that in the end, the most exciting advance on the Wii control system will ultimately come from the creators of the Wii itself.
