Pressure sensitive keyboard prototype (2009)

maxmollon — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 22:52:06 +0000

Title: Pressure sensitive keyboard prototype (2009)
By: Microsoft
Link:
http://www.microsoft.com/appliedsciences/content/projects/PressureSensitiveKB.aspx
http://www.acm.org/uist/uist2009/call/contest.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10304792-1.html
All the Microsoft research projects
Image: on my flickr

Description:
Microsoft demonstrates a gaming demo and typographic demo. Changing font size of text on-the-fly as you increase typing pressure. It also shows off accelerated backspacing (deleting words at a time, instead of letters, as force increases), and posits that it might even be able to minimize typos by gauging whether you used sufficient force on a key to suggest intent.
Concept:
Finger pressure sensed by the keyboard

Opinion:
This Microsoft prototype is inspiring about the hardware possibility and the software potential behind it. A sensitive keyboard could influence typography as in Benjamin Gomez’s project. But crossed with time data it could also reflect an overall intensity through variations in tangible finger input. The visual translation of it could be something else than typography: layout, colors, any non verbal complement of information reflecting the user state of mind…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDI8eYIASf0]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG3RHC8ianc]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80FWh_fQ_Zg]

Caractère frappé (typographie interactive) (2004)

maxmollon — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 18:44:56 +0000

Title: Caractère frappé (typographie interactive) (2004)
By: Benjamin Gomez
Link: http://perso.ensad.fr/ari/archives/2003_04/gomez/index.htm
Image: no image found – ask to Benjamin or Vadim he’s associate

Description:
To translate into english
Une personne se plaçant face au clavier, peut saisir du texte qui remplace la phrase existante. La manière dont il va saisir le texte déterminera la forme de la typographie : comme dans la calligraphie ou l’écriture manuelle c’est le geste dans l’instant présent qui détermine la forme des mots. Le mouvement global de son corps par l’intermédiaire d’une caméra, déformera plus ou moins la typographie
Concept:
Cette typographie n’a de forme que lorsqu’elle est utilisée, elle dépend de la manière dont le texte est saisi. Les paramètres de la saisie modifient le tracé vectoriel des lettres pour redessiner en permanence la typographie. Il s’agit d’investir la typographie de la présence du corps.

Opinion:
The overall concept of this project is a bit more complex than what is described above. I extracted from it only what interests me that is, it’s typographic approach.
Here typographic parameters are modulated by the way of using the keyboard, but what I see is that in an everyday use of that kind of tools, user’s mood – that influence his physical behavior – would naturally react with the message he writes and characterize it visually. It means that typography – which already graphically translate a chosen intention in a message – could be auto-generated by the natural, usual use of the keyboard. Typography would become – a bit more than it already is – a non verbal complement of information to the message possibly associable to the mood, emotion or at least intention of the writer.

» proprioception

Pressure sensitive keyboard prototype (2009)

Caractère frappé (typographie interactive) (2004)