Gestural interfaces in under an hour.

I recently participated in Core77‘s One Hour Design Challenge in Gestural Interfaces. The goal of the design challenge is to develop a concept that is a “a meaningful counterpoint to the all-in-one interface of the screen” and “invites the user to interact with information or their surroundings in a way that encourages discovery while delivering an element of performance.”

Initially I thought of automation concepts like a shower that adjusts temp if it senses the shower-ee cringing from overly hot or cold water. Useful, but not particularly inspiring.

But then I started thinking about discovering new music and how interacting with a screen tends to fracture the listening experience. How might gesture bring freedom, fun and serendipity?

My concept: Encouraging new music discovery through hand shadows. In a nutshell: user makes hand shadow; it’s detected by an infrared motion sensor + video cam tucked away in a lamp then wirelessly sent to a last.fm/Pandora-like app that interprets the shadows to intelligently determine the song to play.

I choose hand shadows because human hands are highly expressive, and creating shadows with one’s hands adds an element of playfulness. It feels natural to show like/dislike of a song through thumbs up/down or to control volume by holding up fingers; but the real fun is to imagine hand shadows for particular genres or bands.

Here are the sketches:
handshadow