I think the Siftables demo at Ted is just incredibly cool. As much as I love computers, I’ve never really come to terms with the user interface. It’s just not physical enough for me. Sure, I’ve tried Wacom tablets and what have you, but it’s just not enough.
The same way we saw Nintendo turn gaming into a physical actitivity, we’ll see computer based work take the same path. It has to move in that direction. People are not designed to move around a little mouse with one hand and type on little keys all day.
Siftables is one step in this direction. I’m not sure yet exactly which jobs would be the right ones for this particular solution, but instantly I can se music sequencers and other music software like Reason or Logic using this (part of the demo touches upon this). Programming drum machines using Siftables could probably be very intuitive.
I’m surprised that not more research is being done in this area. It’s an absolutely huge market. And then we haven’t even started talking about the health benefits of actually being physically active at work.
Will Nintendo design our future workspace? If they do, I’ll be first in line to buy stock.
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http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html