Natural Interaction

Interactive Ceiling

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Testing a 10-meters-wide interactive ceiling at BitBang Festival, Stibbert Museum, Florence. Visual materials by Francesco Buso (iO) and Filippo Principi (MediaBoulevard). July 2008.

Real Estate

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Demo of iO's real estate solution based on SkinTwo. Features dynamic layers based on a database of apartments. Queries are made through manipulation of physical objects; the interface is always coherent. Shows use of an embedded photo printer and an external display. May 2008.

SensitiveTable at CHI 2008

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A great success. A very useful experience. The Skin demo shows several iO's products and projects. Tagged cubes allow to choose the subset of media of interest. Sending content to a printer or other external device mapped on the table's edge is also demonstrated. April 2008.

CHI 2008

We'll be at CHI 2008, April 5-10, Florence, Italy.

It is the premier international conference for human-computer interaction. We'll present and demo the new SensitiveTable. Come meet us!

Design and Interactivity for 500 Abarth

For the 78th International Motor Show in Geneva, iO designed the space concept and provided interactivity and digital contents. March 2008.

Interaction Design for Komatsu

We provided interactivity to the wonderful Komatsu Pavillion at the Samoter Fair.

Three SensitiveWall, three SensitiveFloor, two SensitiveTable, two interactive scenographies for visitors, and one huge interactive scenography for the theatre, for circus artists. March 2008.

Wall for Poste Italiane

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The SensitiveWall consists in a large vertical touchless display able to detect hands' presence in real time, and a set of software templates that present digital content on screen.

Liveliness is expressed through a fluid continuous motion of contents: attraction and repulsion of bubbles, spin of towers' discs at different speeds, accelerated and decelerated viewpoint translation on a large landscape. Contents can be dynamically added, erased or substituted at runtime through a remote control server.

People can move contents just by waving their hands in front of the screen; in order to make contents manifest (e.g. play and zoom for a video) it is sufficient to move a hand close to the content. January 2008.

Showreel 2007

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Max: the 'natural interaction' quality leap

We're on the Italian magazine Max, January 2008 issue.

SensitiveHuman Concept Demo

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Filmed interactive character concept. Special behaviors are enabled when there's no one around the artifact for a long time (it becomes an ambient display) and when someone is passing by, in order to engage people. December 2007.

LIFT Conference

We've won the selection for the LIFT08 Venture Night.

The presence of digital content in the real, physical world is continuously growing. Architecture now embraces the play of digital information in space. This is one of the faces of the phenomenon called 'ubiquitous computing'.

Traditional user interfaces and web metaphors, mouses and keyboards, don't work anymore, don't work outside the desktop. So a new language is needed. Our work is to research such a language, which we call 'natural interaction'. A language based on complete intuitiveness.

Digital does not exist, it is just a form of representation, ones and zeros: real things do exist. By presenting digital content as real things, we allow people to interact with them intuitively, as they are used to interact with the real world.

Something that is absolutely necessary especially in public spaces, where zero-learning-curve is needed, since there you don't have users, you just have people.

In order to shape the space we created a series of digitally-empowered physical elements, such as interactive and skinnable walls, tables, floors, custom artifacts, windows, lamps, etcetera. Such elements are all based on our own sensing and presentation technology.

The space thus becomes place, a dynamical and communicating place, simple and seductive, that defines the experience of the people inside it. This is our notion of experience design. Technology disappears in the environment, and just beauty and simplicity remain.

Wallpaperize!

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Wallpaperize tech demo. January 2008. Wallpaper is visual information on paper glued onto the physical environment. Substitute the glued paper with projected light: visual information thus becomes dynamical, from photo to movie, and can adapt to circumstances.

In the movie above you can see some tests done with a scale model. But the approach has been designed for immersive full size spaces, in an immersive cinema sense and in a skinnable atmosphere sense. The method also allows to pervasively project analytical visual information in the real world space, on furniture, etcetera.

Interactive, dynamical scenographies can be obtained through real time perspective distortion of images and videos, so that the projector-space distortion is neutralized. A different number of projectors is necessary depending on the nature of the scene.

Mark Weiser's Heritage

About twenty years ago Mark Weiser elaborated a vision that was built around two core concepts, and that is still guiding HCI research today. The first concept is ubiquitous computing, it's mainly about hardware, and it is almost fully realized today. Google returns more than 3 millions links about the subject, including conferences, research projects, industry initiatives, etcetera.

But what about the second one, calm technology? It is about interaction design, poetry, perception, quality, and it is almost completely unrealized. It is about much more subtle properties than quantities, miniaturization and wireless networking. Google returns less than 50 thousands results on the subject. The world forgot the most precious part of Weiser's heritage. We do research on calm technology.

SensitiveWindow in Rome

The SensitiveWindow is designed to detect people presence and expressive actions in front of a shop window display (in uncontrolled lighting conditions), and to present contents in a very immediate way, suitable for communication with outdoor passers-by.

People positions and walking directions are estimated in order to trigger the appropriate engaging contents (e.g. full screen movies created to invite or surprise someone walking left to right, etcetera).

The touchless display detects people hands up to 20 centimeters from the window glass, and allows detection of content selections events. Hands are tracked at 60 frames per second; the resolution is 2 centimeters.

The interface is based on a series of fullscreen movies, a series of seamless transitions to move from movie to movie, and a series of smaller movies for content selection; this results in a very dynamical, live shopwindow.

Minority Report: Made in Italy

We're on Il Sole 24 Ore.

SensitiveAdv Demo

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SensitiveAdv demo. October 2007.

The SensitiveAdv, although technically similar to the SensitiveFloor, doesn't rely on a white matte to project onto; high contrast images are pervasively projected onto the environment (e.g. being it wood or concrete). A small (30 centimeters wide) video or animation on black background (thus invisible using good quality DLP projectors) is projected on a wall or on the floor. As someone moves across it the animation expands from that point, involving a much larger area, and expressing content; then the animation goes back seamlessly to the small initial stimulus.

SensitiveWindow

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SensitiveWindow outside of a bank, in a quite traditional fashion.

SMAU 2007

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We were in Milan at this year's SMAU fair, together with IBM. We showed SensitiveFloor, SensitiveWall and SensitiveTable. Our works were fully covered by italian and international televisions. October 2007.

Article from La Repubblica Affari & Finanza

Isola dei Famosi

We worked on the interactive furniture of one of the most important TV shows in Italy.

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Opening and live. More than five million spectators!

The space.

Testing.

The SensitiveFloor is a video projected custom shaped floor section observed by an optical sensor that detects people motions. A variety of audiovisual experiences has been developed, including digital water, mosaics, and games.

SensitiveTable Skin

SensitiveTable's interface, Skin, is at an advanced stage of development. This tech demo shows some of the features under investigation. The multitouch table itself now features zero force sensitivity. May 2007.

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The SensitiveTable is a large multi-touch display that can detects and track the surface of people hands in contact with it at 60 frames per second with a resolution of about 1.5 millimeters. A software application framework allows the creation of custom natural experiences. The table is equipped with array microphones and RFID antennas on its edges. The table runs a speaker independent speech recognition engine, based on a very small vocabulary, that is invoked only in specific circumstances. RFID tagged objects are used to populate the interface with contents, activate functions and authenticate users.

Due to its analytical nature (high resolution and multi-point gestures), the table in the public space is used mostly as a form of digital mediation between two or more persons (e.g. consultant and customer): the expert can lead the novice through the more complex and less intuitive dynamics of interaction.

Frontiers of Interaction III

Alessandro Valli will give a talk titled Interacting with Things at Frontiers of Interaction III, in Milan, on June 28th. He will present some of our latest research work.

Pinocchio!

A customized SensitiveFloor under a huge tent in Pinocchio's Park (Parco di Pinocchio) in Collodi, 2007.

Designing SensitiveTable Skin

Some preliminary sketches about the interaction experience.

Salone del Mobile 2007

The experience of this year's Salone del Mobile, in Milan, has been exciting.

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We presented iOO, our new design initiative. Above you can see the iOO Flowers on an oval table.

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This is the iOO Water.

iOO Butterflies. Sorry, it's just a photo.

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A SensitiveWall gave all the explanations about our iOO initiative in our space in Via Tortona.

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While another SensitiveWall and a SensitiveFloor were part of iO's work for Fiat in San Babila.

Several of our interactive floors were also used in Garde's space.