Designing Gestural Interfaces

Chapter 1. Introducing Interactive Gestures

"One of the things our grandchildren will find quaintest about us is that we distinguish the digital from the real."

—William Gibson in a Rolling Stone interview, November 7, 2007

A man wearing special gloves stands in front of a large, translucent screen. He waves his hand in front of it, and objects on the screenmove. It's as though he's conducting an orchestra or is some sort of high-techsorcerer's apprentice, making objects fly about with just a sweep of his arm. He makes another gesture, and a video begins to play. With both hands, he stretches the video to a larger size, filling more of the screen. It's like magic.

Another place, another time: a different man stands in front of an audience. He's running his fingers over a table-size touchscreen before him as though he is a keyboard player in a rock band, his fingers rapidly manipulating images on the screen by dragging them around. He's making lines appear on-screen with his fingers and turning them into silky, ink-like paintings. He's playing, really—showing off. He drags his fingers across the surface and leaves a trail of bubbles. It's also like magic.

The first man doesn't really exist, although you'd probably recognize the actor playing him: Tom Cruise. The scene is from the movie Minority Report (2002), and it gave the general public its first look at a computer that responds to gestures instead of to speech, a keyboard, or a mouse. It was an impressive feat of visual effects, ...