Smarthome controls are clunky, so Bastian Andelefski developed an alternative. With precise indoor positioning technology (using the ultra-wideband chips in modern phones), one can point at any connected light bulb (or other smarthome device, like a thermostat), and relevant controls will pop up on the phone.

It's an intuitive way of turning on and off smart home lights—certainly a lot better than scrolling through a list of connected lights and reading the lamp names to find the one you want to toggle. I think it nicely exemplifies how ubiquitous computing (in this case, a mobile phone + ultra-wideband positioning beacons + smart light bulbs) can give rise to embodied interaction: the bodily movement required, both in pointing and in …

I have a soft spot for new input peripherals—I think the area of developing new input devices for our computing lives is underexplored¹. They don't always become smashing successes (Apple's Touch Bar never was quite so well received), but I think it's worth exploring to see whether new types of input devices can add meaningful interactions to computers².

The Microsoft Surface Dial looks fantastic. It's a puck that can be twisted and pressed, either on-screen or on a table. This makes it useful in both touchscreen-tablet modes (such as the Surface Studio) or in regular mouse-and-keyboard desktop modes.

The dial allows you to navigate radial menus (another criminally underused UI element, except for, it seems, in 3D software?). Menus can …

Musical instruments really are a fun playground for interaction design. OWOW makes a set of MIDI controllers that differentiate themselves through unique gestural, embodied interactions. Wave your hand above a distance sensor to trigger a drum, rotate a 3DOF movement sensor to fade effects in and out, or scroll over a drawing to produce notes—some interactions might seem more useful than others, but it is inspiring to see how simple off-the-shelf electronic sensors can give rise to varied bodily interactions.

Since it is not uncommon to see this type of interaction design experimentation in musical instruments, perhaps there's something intrinsic to musical performance that lends itself well to this type of more exploratory, bodily …

As video calls become ubiquitous, new interactions are created. A video call creates a dynamic and temporary "shared space", a virtual room that comprises of not only the participant's screens, but also their physical environments. While many services allow the user to guard off other participants' access to their physical environment (replace or blur the background, filter out noise), sometimes the purpose of these calls is referring to the physical environment itself, and showing it to somebody who is not physically there.

ShowMe Assist is created for such a scenario. Example: ringing a handy family member to diagnose and fix a problem with your car. Here, traditional screen-to-screen solutions present some barriers. The video call …

I came across this great interview with Evie Powell, lead UX designer at Proprio. They're creating a surgical imaging platform, that generates real-time, high-fidelity 3D VR views of surgical environments. These VR views can then be complemented with relevant information on an as-you-need basis. This is where the "calm design" smarts of Proprio come in. Rather than bombarding the users with a dashboard of statistics (which would quickly lead to information overload), Evie argues for a different approach:

What you want is a system that takes in all this visual information and smartly displays it to you based on when it’s most relevant. So if the surgeon is looking at the patient, they probably want patient-relevant data. If they’re …

From an interaction design perspective, it's useful to look at augmented and virtual reality not as two distinct technologies, but rather as points on a spectrum that covers various combinations of simulated realities.¹ Augmented reality might typically overlay visuals on the "real" world, and virtual reality typically denotes a all-encompassing virtual world isolated from the real, but there is room in the design space to move between these two ends of the spectrum.

VRtuos is an excellent example of the "somewhere-in-between". It is a way to learn to play the piano with a VR headset — Guitar Hero or Tap Tap Revenge style. Users pair VRtuos to their piano and load a MIDI file. Now the notes to the song come falling down from virtual …

Mediated Body is a portable system invented by Mads Hobye, wherein a performer wearing an interactive suit provokes an engaging experience with a stranger¹. The suit is able to pick up skin on skin contact between the performer and participant, which generates a soundscape that plays back in the headphones worn by both parties. In addition to the sounds, the suit creates ambient coloured light effects to both enhance the touch dynamic and to draw more attention from others in the surroundings. In this way, the suit playfully excuses physical touch between two people that have not met before – breaking the taboo of not being allowed to touch.

Mediated Body essentially makes an interface out of the performer’s and participant’s bodies, …

The Mimu gloves are a musical input device. Through various continuous hand gestures the artist can control various musical effects, like high- or low-pass filters, panning, reverb, etc. Gestures can also be linked discrete controls, such as starting, stopping or dropping a recorded loop. On paper, it is a wearable MIDI controller, which instead of knobs and buttons uses bodily movement.

In practice, however, it enables something that's greater than the sum of its parts. It allows the artist, who might be singing a vocal part at the same time, to have detailed and accessible control over their sound. Instead of fiddling with an industrial controller filled with knobs and buttons, the Mimu gloves enable meaningful and expressive movement. …

Nintendo Labo is a clever way to augment videogaming with a physical counterpart. With foldable pieces of cardboard, one constructs various toys that the Nintendo Switch can slot into. The different sensors and actuators on the Switch then interact with the cardboard models, creating fishing rods, pianos, motorcycles, robots, and more.

It looks incredibly fun to play with, both as a kid, fully immersed in the make-believe world, and as a parent, playing and setting it up together with your kid. Perhaps even using the in-game explanation of how it works. But beside the joyful appeal, it's very interesting from an interaction design perspective. It does away with the uniform controls of buttons and joysticks for every game. Instead, both …

The printer called "Paper" is a fun project that reimagines the modern printer. First off, the industrial design of this printer is stunning, compared to the dull and dreary printers we know. This alone makes it eye-catching and entices you to interact with it.

In terms of aesthetic interaction and enjoyment of use, it has some interesting aspects to consider. Rather than hiding the functional components, it displays them in plain sight: paper isn't hidden away in hard-to-open drawers, but exposes it in a playful manner, much like a roll of paper towels. Rather than a row of identical buttons, it uses a variety of physical controls (buttons, knobs, and switches), which help differentiate and announce their function, particularly on repeat …

Very Slow Movie Player is a cool experiment: an e-ink picture frame that plays a movie not at 24 frames per second, but at 24 frames per hour. This inverts the normal movie-watching experience. The rhythm is flipped, and it presents interesting thoughts on the speed of technology and the attention it demands. The author discusses some interesting implications of the use of slowly-changing e-ink displays in public spaces: a calmer alternative to LED screens (as in bus stops), or as an ornamental way to blend our digital lives into our physical ones (buildings whose appearance change over the course of days, or in response to their environment). But beside being a provocative prototype of calm or slow technology, the Very Slow Movie Player …

Alarmy is an unusual alarm clock. While the selling point of many alarm clock apps is a pretty interface, a soothing melody, or even smart triggers based on sleep-tracking, alarmy deliberately makes itself a nuisance. In order to turn it off, you take a picture of your bathroom, you shake your phone vigorously, or scan the barcode of your shampoo. These annoying cues force you to wake up, and the harsh actions guarantee that you get out of bed.

The interesting interaction design angle to this product is that it deliberately does not design for a "delightful" UX. Instead, it's unique selling point is a negative experience. But by incorporating this annoyance into its UX, it ultimately flips the negative experience on around head. One can …