Hover Sensing Demos
Generally thought of as a nuisance, hover sensing can lead to accidental input on the computer. Despite this, we sought to explore hover sensing as a feature. In the Orzo demo we explored a variety of use cases for hover sensing on a touchpad. We took these explorations further with the Jenkins demo, which explored hover sensing on a touchscreen. We also made an exploration into using hover sensing as input for a quadcopter for a Synaptics hackathon.
Why it matters: Turning a bug into a feature can lead to explorations which strengthen one’s technology offering. Simple questions can lead to fruitful explorations.
Contributions: Concept and ideation, user interface design, game design.
Team: Eric Faggin + Synaptics CPT: Bjorn Hovden, Andrew Hsu, Mark Huie, Kipling Inscore, Jerry Shao. (Our intern, Joseph Greef, continued work on the quadcopter in summer 2014).
Orzo Demo: The first hover demo showcased interactions ranging from the helicopter game (shown above), a drumset, hover to wake, and hovering edge swipes.
Orzo Demo: The UI for the Orzo Proximity touchpad demo.
Jenkins demo: We sought to use hover sensing in a map navigation use case to bring up menus as one approaches the touchscreen to interact with it.
Jenkins Demo: The concept was demoed on a smartphone, whereby hovering over the phone would bring up the menus, and as one approaches the phone, the menus enlarge.
CPT CPTR (Concept Prototyping Team Copter): Shown below is another use case we came up with for a Synaptics hackathon, whereby we rigged a quadcopter to follow the hovering hand, essentially “walking” your quadcopter. Our intern, Joe Greef, later refined this tracking during the summer of 2014.
Concept illustration of the CPT CPTR use case.
Team CPT CPRT poster.