Pen-based input research 22 Dec 2008

Thanks to the iPhone, Surface et al., the world has gone multitouch mad. Yet, while touch screen technology has some, nay many, great applications, in certain contexts it's absolutely useless - it sucks in situations where precise selections need to be made for example. It's therefore important that the popularity of touch doesn't distract us UI designers from keep an eye on the emergence (and re-emergence) of other input technologies.

With this in mind, we'd like to draw your attention to Johnny Chung Lee's roundup of the work that's being done with pen-based input. (You many remember Johnny's famous Wii experiments). Check out the video clip below for an overview of "The Zlider" - a pressure sensitive widget that "adds additional navigation and control capability to standard slider interactions." (More clips featuring different pen-based user interfaces are available on Johnny's site).