At the beginning of my long thesis journey, I started with a broad question: "How can a multi-touch based interface create a new form of communication and control?" I have an interest in “natural user interfaces,” which interact with users by means of direct input from human motion instead of mouse or keyboard data. It encourages a reduction of boundaries between human and digital content. How can we reduce the boundaries between ourselves and digital content? Through touch technology, the user can interact with information by the means of intuitive and physical actions.
Why am I attracted to the notion of natural interfaces? We have sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch senses. Physically, touch is the only sense that involves all of the followings: recognition, communication, and control. First of all, we can cognitively recognize objects through spatial properties and touch. We can identify a ball because it is perfectly round, which is known through past experience. Touch can also communicate information between parties in non-verbal ways. For example, shaking hands can be an act of saying hello with a respect to each other. Lastly, we can control an event through pressure, temperature, and touch points. In the current world, most of the times we use touch pressure to activate things, such as turning on a light or pressing a button. I believe that touch interface can utilize this aspect of touch beyond the capacity of button-based interfaces. The fact that touch itself can be the interface between our bodies and digital contents is fascinating.
In modern times, there is wide spread usage of touch interfaces. Following the aggressive expansion of this technology, the average user has grown accustom to interacting with these interfaces. The arrival of multi-touch interface technology was a turning point for interface designers. Single-touch and multi-touch interfaces have similarities in physicality and intuitiveness; however, they differ in their capabilities and possibilities. With the technology that we have and can mass-produce for the market, most of the touch kiosks and cell phones are simply replacing a button with a touch. The emergence of i-phone applications brought literally thousands of unique touch-applications to the small device platform.
However, what happens when we have bigger physical platforms for multi-touch applications? What if it can be integrated into architecture or urban structures? I have a belief that multi-touch interfaces can create new kinds of social interactions. At this point, I believe that there is still much more to be investigated and explored in the multi-touch interface field. Due to the fact that multi-touch interfaces possess multi-user capabilities, there is an infinite number of new possible applications to be designed for this platform.