Years ago while visiting my older brother in New York City I had the good fortune of being able to visit the WIRED magazine pop-up store in Manhattan where the years most expensive technology was put on prominent display. One technology was the Optimus Maximus keyboard, a slick piece of hardware where each key had an embedded full color display, allowing the user to dynamically define the visual profile of the key as well as the function associated with it. Visually speaking I was incredibly impressed, but my opinion rapidly changed when I actually used the keyboard, the buttons felt too soft to the touch, which for the trade off of input flexibility might have been acceptable, if the price wasn't so incredible. Costing well over $1,400 per keyboard, the Optimus felt like it was meshing with a very narrow consumer base. I started to wonder if it would make more sense to create a less flashy but still tremendously flexible E-Ink version of the technology. Each key possessing a separately addressable display module, allowing users to dynamically update the characters associated with the program being run.
The idea of integrating e-ink with input surfaces continues to evolve, what follows are a few outlines of how device flexibility might be improved.
Contemporary laptop track-pads are incredibly limiting on how they allow users to interact with their computer. The surface area of interaction is mechanically limited to whatever segment of the computer body was defined by the design team. When a user is predominately using their laptop as a typing device it makes sense to limit the potential of accidentally moving your cursor, but in an era where people use their computers for more than word processing the interface should evolve with the people.
Imagine a computer where the entire hand rest surface area is covered in a high contrast E-Ink display. During "normal" operations, this visually adaptive trackpad (or VAT for the remainder of this article*) would highlights the traditional position of the trackpad and accepts input. The magic would happen when users open other programs, for example a photo editing suite, new icons would appear, providing rapid access to commonly used features. For users who might need more fluid control over the sensitivity of the cursor they could define their track pad to allow for higher sensitivity at the center of the input region and lower sensitivity at the periphery or vice versa for gamers.
With the VAT occupying so much of the laptop's real estate the physical click would also need to be improved. One option would be to place the entire display on a slight hinge and allow for any region to be mechanically compressed for clicking to occur. Another alternative would be to eliminate the mechanical click and instead implement haptic feedback devices through out the frame, where the screen would vibrate when it acknowledges a click or some other gesture.
Social net working could be made more flexible with users being provided with tools to allow them to create small update windows. These windows could do more than provide a place for you to read tweets, or the other obvious alternative of simple daily update widgets, the display could serve as an art piece, where the pattern would evolve according to any number of custom inputs and artistic themes. As the refresh rate of E-Ink is much lower than traditional LCDs the art should attempt to embrace the limitations of the format.
Similar concepts and technologies. The Razer Switchblade interface. The Switchblade is a 4 inch multi-touch screen that serves as a trackpad for the Razer Blade Pro laptop.
Pros: Having the LCD screen allows for a far more dynamic display on the input surface.
Cons: The LCD requires more energy and is limited to a static point on the body of the laptop.
*sorry for the terrible name I couldn't think of a good one
The idea of integrating e-ink with input surfaces continues to evolve, what follows are a few outlines of how device flexibility might be improved.
Contemporary laptop track-pads are incredibly limiting on how they allow users to interact with their computer. The surface area of interaction is mechanically limited to whatever segment of the computer body was defined by the design team. When a user is predominately using their laptop as a typing device it makes sense to limit the potential of accidentally moving your cursor, but in an era where people use their computers for more than word processing the interface should evolve with the people.
Imagine a computer where the entire hand rest surface area is covered in a high contrast E-Ink display. During "normal" operations, this visually adaptive trackpad (or VAT for the remainder of this article*) would highlights the traditional position of the trackpad and accepts input. The magic would happen when users open other programs, for example a photo editing suite, new icons would appear, providing rapid access to commonly used features. For users who might need more fluid control over the sensitivity of the cursor they could define their track pad to allow for higher sensitivity at the center of the input region and lower sensitivity at the periphery or vice versa for gamers.
With the VAT occupying so much of the laptop's real estate the physical click would also need to be improved. One option would be to place the entire display on a slight hinge and allow for any region to be mechanically compressed for clicking to occur. Another alternative would be to eliminate the mechanical click and instead implement haptic feedback devices through out the frame, where the screen would vibrate when it acknowledges a click or some other gesture.
Social net working could be made more flexible with users being provided with tools to allow them to create small update windows. These windows could do more than provide a place for you to read tweets, or the other obvious alternative of simple daily update widgets, the display could serve as an art piece, where the pattern would evolve according to any number of custom inputs and artistic themes. As the refresh rate of E-Ink is much lower than traditional LCDs the art should attempt to embrace the limitations of the format.
Similar concepts and technologies. The Razer Switchblade interface. The Switchblade is a 4 inch multi-touch screen that serves as a trackpad for the Razer Blade Pro laptop.
Pros: Having the LCD screen allows for a far more dynamic display on the input surface.
Cons: The LCD requires more energy and is limited to a static point on the body of the laptop.
*sorry for the terrible name I couldn't think of a good one
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