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.

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). I participated as a consultant in the initial creative brainstorming and technical definition. Bringing in Moto Development to create the multi-touch technology and optics, I coordinated Moto with the creative team, advised on interaction issues, and developed test projects to explore different interaction possibilities.

After the first year deployment at the auto shows, American Honda and GPJ lent the Oracle to the MDP for our summer term. I taught my Interactive Objects and Spaces class with the Oracle as one of our experimental design platforms. Several student and faculty projects came out of this, and IOS student Jonathan Jarvis then went on to intern at GPJ, implementing a version of his class project which became the Oracle application for the 2007/2008 auto show season. 

One of the Oracles has now 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.

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 (MDP alum, basing the project on his thesis project) as creative director. Nikolai worked with The Designory, MindFlood, and my company Commotion. 

On this project, I 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. In addition, I provided interactive consulting on the project.

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).

[View with PicLens]

www.interactivemirror.net