The project that kept me awake over the last couple of weeks was a mapping installation we did for the 50th year anniversary of our institute.
I don’t want to brag, but I think this thing is pretty cool: it’s a horizontal map projection on a table, where users interact with the projection, with the light, itself by moving little backgammon tokens around. That way visitors can explore the map and selected spatial and regional indicators.
It’s based on a video tracking system, set up by Emanuel, together with a light-weighted mapping application responding to those incoming video signals by querying a database and visualizing geographic data. The concept is rather simple, but as so often, the devil is in the details. Proper handling of the video signals was pretty tricky in our case and made us stay late at the office. Even though we couldn’t implement every planned feature, it was the first time we used video tracking for user interaction, we are very satisfied with our first release. The response from our visitors was great and we definitely see potential and will keep on working on that project.
However, I observed one noteworthy point while watching some visitors interacting with the map: several people standing around the table started instantly talking about the map, the shown maps triggered communication and people started discussing the presented indicators. Unlike clean paper printouts or maps on screens, people could touch the map, grab the tokens, place the tokens, touch and point with their hands and fingers onto the map without fearing canapé-greasy finger prints. Although it was only light, it seemed like they had a tool in their hands they could play with.
One visitor told me that the installation reminds him of the old large plotted paper maps and plans.
Another point for this vivid communication is the distance to the screen I think. If the projection would be vertical, every visitor would be at another distance, standing on another level, to the image. While standing around a table, where the image is in the center, the distance from the image to every visitor is constant. Maybe that makes visitors feel more equal and makes it easier for them to join the discussion. Nobody is standing behind, everybody can access – view, grab, touch – the information the same way.
If I remember correctly Microsoft had a research project or something about making the virtual PC desktop real. After I’ve seen what you can achieve with “grabbing & touching” I definitely think that’s the future. The mouse is a 30 year old idea. Isn’t that almost ancient in the world of technology?