Interview with Jeremy Wagstaff from Wall Street Journal Online

jeremy.wagstaff: Do you mind offering a general comment about the future of interfaces with regard to something like Google Earth? Your project sounds interesting, and I imagine it's the starting point for a whole new way of operating these kinds of environments

Edward: Sure, it may seem like this is a whole new way of interacting with maps but this is in fact not the case. Many of the interactions that I have tried to design over geospatial applications (e.g., Google Earth, Warcraft III) are designed to mirror the actions that people do in the physical environment. For example, studies of military command and control situations show that Brigadier Generals work together on a paper map on a table. They use multiple fingers to mark points of interest and use two hand sides to mark areas of interest.

jeremy.wagstaff: interesting...

Edward: We now have technology that can detect these unique hand postures/configurations on a digital table where people can get the benefit of panning/zooming along with real time updates. I'd envision that this kind of interaction will in fact be more similar to the way that people interact in the physical world rather than some totally new type of interaction.

One thing that is particularly interesting is support for multiple people. Current operating systems limit interaction to a single keyboard and mouse at any given time.

There are new touch technologies that can detect the touches from multiple people simultaneously. While we are currently working over existing applications (e.g., GE), researchers are working at building true multi user applications that will be able to understand multiple people are respond appropriately. For example, an annotation mode where multiple people can draw on the surface simultaneously with their own separate markers/colours

jeremy.wagstaff: that does sound cool. when might we see any of these on sale?

Edward: well, actually these surfaces are already being sold. For example, the MERL Diamond Touch is being sold through Mitsubishi Electrc Research Laboratories in Cambridge, MA. Also, Smart Technologies sells a large digital whiteboard that can support up to two touch simultaneous touches. Currently they are a bit expensive $7'000-$12'000 USD but as with all things their prices will be dropping in the near future. In fact, the price of a Smart Board has dropped significantly over the past few years and the market for large digital whiteboards has really exploded in the education sector. I'd envision that these kinds of surfaces should be affordable to the regular home consumer within 7 years. The technology is already in place, it's just a matter of having the right applications and interactions

jeremy.wagstaff: that should be cool...

jeremy.wagstaff: thanks a lot for this. can i ask a bit about your background? are you a canada native?

Edward: Yes, I was born and raised in Canada. Currently I am finishing up a doctorate at the University of Calgary. I have done internships with both Smart Technologies in Calgary, AB and Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories in Cambridge, MA.

RE: Buying a Digital Table for My Home

A question from Rainer Schuller

[ Rainer ] I´m a huge fan of RTS Games and just saw ur W3 Video. First of all: Wonderful Idea! Really love it! I would be very interested what your opinion is about the release date and the approximate cost of such a Command Panel?

[ Ed ] Large display touch technologies are already available from commercial companies such as Mitsubishi and SMART. Currently, these input technologies are expensive ($9 - $20K USD) but their price will no doubt drop with time, remember that you can get portable computers today as powerful as computers 30 years ago that were the size of large rooms and would easily cost millions of dollars. Realize that these prices have already dropped about $10'000 USD over the past 5 years and are expected to continue to drop for many years to come.

Bill Buxton has stated in an interview that "What is going to happen In the next five to seven years is very high resolution displays, that is as many pixels per inch on the display as you have on your laptop screen. They are going to be cheaper and thinner, but cheaper per square foot than the whiteboards that are on your walls today. I repeat, to get a really, really, really high resolution large display the size of the whiteboard in your classroom or your office is going to be cheaper than the whiteboard that you have there currently. And it’s going to be 6 mm thick. That’s a little bit thicker than a piece of paper and it’s going to cost around $10 a square foot. And it’s going to transform completely how we think about information and information displays and how we interact with them."

When asked who is doing that now Bill responds: "There are a number of companies, none of them Canadian, doing the basic technology. Phillips is doing a lot. Some of the core technology is being done in Cambridge England by company called Cambridge Display Technologies. So there’s a lot of materials, it’s very expensive stuff. There’s a lot of cooperation with companies like Sharp and Mitsubishi and other companies in Japan. But I don’t care about the technology, I just know it’s coming. The question is, who is going to be smart enough to know what to do with it once it arrives? And that’s where there is an Alberta company called Smart Technologies in Calgary which is the world leader in electronic whiteboards."

Bill is probably right, we should expect to see stuff like this in homes within the 5-7 year mark at incredibly affordable prices. However, in order for such technology to succeed, there needs to be advances in display hardware, input hardware and large display interaction software. My research is specifically targeted at the software domain.

Hopefully all of these things will come together and you'll be able to enjoy tabletop games and applications in your home in the near future. From the science fiction author William Gibson "The future is already here - it's just not uniformly distributed."