And the doubters are right, for those of us who want a cool, small, OS X laptop thing, the iPad does not hit the mark (of course, as the iPad matures it will get many of these things – the inevitable 4.0 release of the iPhone OS will likely address the multitasking and app organization issues. And maybe Adobe and Apple will finally make nice for the Flash plug-in. And the 2011 version will have a camera etc.).

But people who want a better laptop aren’t the target audience for the iPad. Just like people who wanted a better Blackberry weren’t the target audience for the original iPhone. And people who wanted a green-washed sports-car were not the target audience for the Prius. Guess what? These products were a success anyway, because they met a new need and found a new audience.

So what is the iPad? Well, that remains to be seen. It will evolve in the next year as developers turn the iPad into a range of completely new things that, once they exist, will be essential for many people. To start all this off, Apple gives us the basic foundation and a decent value proposition:

• Read rich media books/magazines/newspapers
• Comfortably browse the web
• Use interactive textbooks and other learning material
• Work with personal media (photos, music, video)
• Play games
• Shift low-intensity computer stuff off the computer (email, todo lists, calendars, presentations, note taking, etc.)
• And as an add-on value, provide an admittedly compromised level of computer substitution for word processing, spreadsheets, etc. so we don’t always have to drag around a laptop.

That alone is a pretty good deal for $500. But what will come, and will likely make the iPad a major success, is a range of new apps that turn the iPad into an incredible device for doing more specific kinds of activities. For example, recording a song – it can be a complete recording system and tangible interface with faders, knobs, transport controls, etc. Or as remote control for your house and entertainment system. Or as a painting canvas. Or as a device that sits next to, and is an adjunct to your computer - wacom tablet, todo list, email, application switcher, etc. Or to organize your genealogy. Or to do scrapbooking (really, this could sell a millions units alone). Or plan a trip. Or evaluate X-Rays at your patient’s bedside… You get the idea.

I call these devices Slabs. The iPad, iPhone, Andriod, etc. are generic platforms that, via an app, turn into a product. And a 10″ Slab with multi-touch surface can be a lot of different products.

More to come in the following days on my thoughts about SLABS, SOFTDUCTS, and BESPOKE OBJECTS.

Update: Behind the scenes of the making of the video

Microsoft Office Lab’s Vision 2019 video

MDP Alumni Sebastian Bettencourt’s Beyond The Fold Newspaper Project

Here are links to several of my students’ past projects:

• 2004 – wall – scott nazarian, nikolai cornell
• 2005,2006 – mirror – in search of identity, infiniti interactive - nikolai cornell, phil van allen, others
• 2006 – interactive table – acura oracle – nikolai cornell, jonathan jarvis, phil van allen, others
• 2006 – handheld augmented reality – telepath – matt mcbride
• 2007 – e-paper newspaper – beyond the fold - sebastian bettencourt

In my current New Ecology of Things class, and in my upcoming research, we are working on an in-depth exploration of how people can work, play, and be entertained using digital affordances, yet moving away from the “mouse crouch” of sitting at a computer. One difference I have from the Microsoft vision is this: I believe each different activity can have its own set of affordances rather than the seeming standard ones envisioned in the Microsoft video. For example, writing an essay should be quite different from say, designing a website. I call this approach “anti-homogenous.” What we don’t need is a new ubiquitous interface and set of gestures. What we do need is gaining back some of the benefits of work and play spaces that are suited to the activity at hand.

This line of thinking was inspired by an article in Metropolis Magazine by John Hokenberry on an excellent new photography book by Michael Wolf called The Transparent City. The photos are studies of high-rises in Chicago, and show the uniformity of our current workplaces. An excerpt from the article:

The steel mill can’t be confused with the meatpacking plant or the typewriter-assembly factory. But here one has no idea of what goods or (more likely) services emerge from these cubicles and boardrooms.

Microsoft is proposing a new way of working, but in many ways, it is reproducing the idea of one-size-fits-all that’s embodied by operating systems like Windows. I’m not saying that Microsoft got it all wrong, they did a very good job up to a point. But perhaps we need to think beyond the homogenous approach. Instead, people need to be able to create their own work/play spaces that afford the kind of activities they are doing at the moment.  What would that heterogenous approach look like?

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