Philip van Allen » autoshow

Honda & GPJ donate multi-touch table to the Media Design Program

phil — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 03:16:46 +0000

American Honda and George P. Johnson have donated one of their Oracle Multi-touch Tables to the Media Design Program. We now have it permanently in our graduate studio where it is available for faculty and students to develop new applications. In particular, we’re interested in exploring how large sets of text and image content can be explored in a collaborative way with multiple users.

Acura Oracles, round multitouch table

phil — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 00:32:00 +0000

The Acura Oracle project was initiated by MDP alumni Nikolai Cornell at George P. Johnson for the Acura stand at the international auto shows (including Detroit, Chicago, New York, and LA) for the 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 exhibitions. It’s a 4 foot round multitouch table that enables a social experience for a group of people.

I participated as a consultant in the initial creative brainstorming and technical definition. I brought in Moto Development to create the multi-touch technology and optics, coordinated Moto with the creative team, advised on interaction design issues, and developed test projects and tools exploring different interaction possibilities. In the summer of 2007 GPJ loaned an Oracle for use in my class, and student Jonathan Jarvis made demos that became the design basis for the second version that was at the 2008 auto shows.

Video after the break

One of the Oracles has been permanently donated to the MDP

See also a page put up by Bill Buxton, one of the original people to implement multi-touch systems back in the ’80s.

Infiniti Interactive Mirror – 2006 Detroit Auto Show

phil — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 20:27:00 +0000

An installation for Infiniti at the International Auto Shows, the Infiniti Interactive Mirror is a 3 screen interface that uses mirrored glass and rear projection to create a seamless large screen touch interface. George P. Johnson created the project with Nikolai Cornell as creative director (MDP alum, based on his thesis project). Nikolai worked with The Designory, MindFlood, and my company Commotion.

On this project, I provided consulting on interaction design and approaches for the project, and designed and built the sensor system that detects a person’s hand position in front of a flat surface without any sensors on the sides of the display or behind the user.

Read an article on how the project was produced (rescued with the wayback machine – was originally published online at designinteract.com, but communication arts killed it).

[nivo source="nextgen" gallery=2 effect="slideInRight"]