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Joystick-like Input Method for Smartwatches

176 pointsby druidsbaneabout 11 years ago

13 comments

habosaabout 11 years ago
Makes me wonder how many other interfaces are horribly wrong because everyone has just accepted them. I didn&#x27;t really think there would be many ways to interact with a smartwatch besides touchscreen and side buttons. And then someone played DOOM on one better than I could do it on my Android phone. Reminds me of how I felt when I first saw pinch to zoom on a capacitive touch screen and realized that it was so natural.<p>I think one area where people are always doing experiments like this is Android soft keyboards. I&#x27;ve seen so many wacky ways to input text, and some actually work pretty well.<p>Also today MSFT announced that keyboard research project with gestures, good day for alternative interfaces.
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zan2434about 11 years ago
This makes so much sense. The screen isn&#x27;t big enough to be interacted with directly, but interacting with the media on the screen using the body of the device is brilliant.
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dangabout 11 years ago
This is a great post that looks like it&#x27;s falling through the cracks. I suggest you repost it later (you may need to use a slightly different url). When a solid story hasn&#x27;t yet had significant attention, a small number of reposts are ok.<p>Edit: Never mind—it didn&#x27;t fall through the cracks after all, which is great.
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joyeuse6701about 11 years ago
Very cool, I feel like when we thought smartwatch, we all thought of another smaller iphone or touch device. This interface is much more in line with actual watches. It&#x27;s great
sebularabout 11 years ago
Love the video.<p>It made me think about all of the empty space on a smart watch that could be used more effectively. Buttons or touch surfaces could be built into the wrist strap, and perhaps an alternate location for a joystick like this would be on the opposite side of your wrist from where the screen is positioned.<p>Now, if only there was a way to cram a halfway-decent typing experience into one of those things...
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Timotheeabout 11 years ago
<i>unfortunately, due to the placement on the wrist, they must be small</i><p>I don&#x27;t know if they&#x27;re small because they&#x27;re on the wrist or because they&#x27;re sold as watches.<p>I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;d be against having a bigger screen on my wrist like control panels that have been seen in SciFi shows for many years :) Something smaller than an iPhone, but maybe like the iPod Nano would work.<p>I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised to see them appear soon. Sometimes, I feel that I could use my iPhone on my arm rather than my pocket, when walking for example. But the smart watches tend to have too little screen real estate.
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martin-adamsabout 11 years ago
Very nice concept and I think I can really see this taking off. You can then use it as a remote device to larger screens as you wouldn&#x27;t need to look down at the watch. It reminds me very much of the 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse[1]<p>My only minor criticism with the demo is the click to take a photo. This would be disastrous as usually people are in low light conditions, it would make you move your hand (and thus camera) and it would introduce camera shake.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.3dconnexion.co.uk/index.php?id=352" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.3dconnexion.co.uk&#x2F;index.php?id=352</a>
Hytosysabout 11 years ago
Everything looks great! Except the click gesture. Besides warping the LCD (which would admittedly be mounted better in production), it seems like there&#x27;s an unavoidable amount of strain on both wrists. Still, very cool! It&#x27;s amazing how many awful interfaces we work with on a daily basis that could use some love like this.
tonylemesmerabout 11 years ago
Could this be expanded to smartphones? A pressure sensitive bezel to avoid occluding the screen for simple interactions and eliminating buttons but having regions for input.
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ifelsethenabout 11 years ago
slightly different concept (but too neat to not share):<p><a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pacosal.sw.joystick" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=com.pacosal.sw...</a><p>praise to sony for supplying an SDK for the Smartwatch platform that enables devs to create their own software!<p>they also have tools for creating custom firmware. the smartwatch should have the sensors necessary for someone to make this happen (mostly) on existing hardware.
Pxtlabout 11 years ago
The &quot;click&quot; operation looks clumsy - I&#x27;d rather just have some buttons along the edge. But the twist&#x2F;nudge stuff looks great.
artificialidiotabout 11 years ago
So the whole watch body acts as a nipple mouse... Got it.
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zackmorrisabout 11 years ago
Introducing the iPod Watchie