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TorCHI

Designing Natural: The Secrets of Microsoft's Natural User Interfaces

  • 29 Jun 2011
  • 7:00 PM
  • Bahen Room 1200 (main floor), 40 St. George Street
Daniel's book, Brave NUI World, will be available at sale price of CA $25 (tax included).  One lucky attendee will win a free copy!

Abstract: Advanced sensing capabilities, such as those offered by Microsoft's Surface and Kinect, have the potential to transform HCI. The goal is to create a 'Natural User Interface', one in which the user's capabilities and needs are reflected to the point that they feel 'like a natural' when working with these technologies. In this talk, Daniel will present the framework which guided the design of the user interfaces of several of Microsoft's exciting current and upcoming products. He will also finally, once and for all, present the concrete definition of 'NUI' which came from these design efforts, and which has been badly misunderstood by many seeking to mimic them. The clear directive that 'Natural' is a design goal, and not a design methodology or metaphor, forms the basis for these efforts, and can serve as a guiding light for those seeking to build truly compelling, Natural user interfaces.

Bio: Daniel Wigdor is an assistant professor of computer science and co-director of the Dynamic Graphics Project at the University of Toronto.

Before joining the faculty at U of T in 2011, Daniel was a researcher at Microsoft Research, the user experience architect of the Microsoft Surface, and a company-wide expert in Natural User Interfaces. Simultaneously, he served as an affiliate assistant professor in both the Department of Computer Science & Engineering and the Information School at the University of Washington. Prior to 2008, he was a fellow at the Initiative in Innovative Computing at Harvard University, and conducted research as part of theDiamondSpace project at Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs. He is also the co-founder of Iota Wireless, a startup dedicated to the commercialization of his research in mobile-phone gestural interaction.

Daniel is the co-author of Brave NUI World | Designing Natural User Interfaces for Touch and Gesturethe first practical book for the design of touch and gesture interfaces. He has also published dozens of other works as invited book chapters and papers in leading international publications and conferences, and is an author of over two dozen patents and pending patent applications.

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