Jeff Han’s Truly Amazing Multi-Touch Sensing Computer Interface
by Bill Ives
I recently saw a great YouTube video, Jeff Han’s Multi-Touch Sensing, thanks to my friend Thierry Hubert at Wikigazette. Jeff showed a computer display that senses multiple touch points. So you can use all your fingers and others can join in. So you can take two sides of a photo to expand it in two directions at the same time, as Jeff showed. You can also have more than one person working.
He said that there is no reason that people should conform to computer interfaces, but rather the computer should conform to people, like the use of all your fingers. This should be a big plus for data visualization as Jeff suggested. He also went to NASA World Wind and showed how the interface seems to be transparent as you just work with the maps with both hands to move around and go in and out.
I was amazed when I saw the Apple Lisa visual interface in the very early 80s while doing some work for Apple. This seems to have the potential to have a far greater impact to change the way we interact with computers.
