On October 5th, we participated in the Student Innovation Contest at the 2009 User Interface Software and Technology conference (UIST) in Victoria, BC. Student teams were given about a month to develop a novel use for a pressure sensitive keyboard developed by Microsoft Research, and all the entries were demonstrated and voted upon at the conference. Our submission is detailed below and in this demo video.
Laban Gestures for Expressive Keyboarding
Karen Tanenbaum, Josh Tanenbaum & Johnny Rodgers
Simon Fraser University-School of Interactive Arts + Technology
Keyboards tend to be discrete input devices, capable of multiple isolated interactions. The addition of pressure sensitivity adds a continuous dimension to keyboard input, adding additional information about the user’s actions. To take advantage of this, the role of the keyboard must be reimagined. Our goal was to design keyboard interactions that were expressive and emotional.