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SurfaceWare

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We spend a lot of time thinking about how the unique optical capabilities of Microsoft Surface can be used to create magical experiences with everyday objects.  A couple folks from the Applied Sciences team and the Surface SDK team got together a while ago to prototype one such concept that we call "SurfaceWare".  Paul Dietz explains the concept really well in a video he just uploaded so I'll just let that speak for itself:

On a personal note... this was one of my favorite prototype projects to work on even though my contribution was just the demo UI. Not only is it a fascinating concept that inspires creativity and innovation, it also got me an opportunity to mark "give a demo to BillG" off the list of things I've always wanted to do. At the 2007 Hardware Science Fair that Microsoft Hardware hosts annually for employees, I was granted 45 seconds to walk Bill through the SurfaceWare concept and demo. He smiled, nodded, and then was promptly escorted to the next booth to see another really cool prototype of future hardware concepts. My mom tries to brag by telling this story to her friends and co-workers - she leaves out the details of it being a 45-second, one-way conversation though :)

We'd love to have a two-way conversation with you about SurfaceWare.  What do you think of the concept?  Can you think of other types of objects where similar techniques could be used to create magical experiences?

-Robert

Comments

  • Anonymous
    October 22, 2008
    I keep thinking of education and museums. You could setup some pretty cool "science" experiments/challenges for school kids using this concept. The collaboration is the key, the mixture of multitouch, multiuser, visual feedback and object detection will produce some really engaging activities for groups. Touch screens / computers have always been a single user experience in an exhibition / classroom space. What would be very neat would be to build a framework as simple as PopFly where teachers/curators could interactively build applications with no programming skills. For example maybe it’s just a game where you have a set of objects – eg mosaic tiles – the aim to lay them out correctly. All the teacher/curator has to do is teach the surface table the objects (assigning markers) and interactively provide the correct layout. The program does the rest providing visual cues and feedback and the game logic. I just hope the table is water proof ;)

  • Anonymous
    October 24, 2008
    Surface is water-proof. That's how it can survive the punishment of being in a bar. Take for instance, the Rio in Las Vegas. Here's a photo of me spilling a drink on the set of our product video shot at the Rio in June.

  • Anonymous
    June 05, 2009
    I'm very excited about this concept. I would love to use this technology in my restaurant venture hopefully launching this year. I'd like to speak to the developer(s) behind this to find out what requirements I will need to make this happen.