I’m a bit of a sucker for concept interface designs: I love how they show off the massive capabilities of new technology without any obvious current practical use. But these new offerings from Microsoft could really be useful.
Well, kind of. They’re probably not going to be popping up in your home any time soon, and one stands head shoulders above the rest, but they’re fun all the same.
My personal favourite is Illumishare, which features in the video above. In many ways, it’s just a physical version of shared drawing pads you get on many conference call systems. But that’s what makes it great: the tangible quality would make it wonderful for interacting with other people and real objects, which is obviously something that can’t happen in a purely digital environment. Playing games with your kids remotely, working on artistic collaborations, the kinds of experiences where working with a computer is clunky — this would be a great solution.
Elsewhere, there’s this 3D desktop environment that uses a transparent OLED and Kinect to allow users to manipulate objects with their hands in real time.
There’s also this bat-shit crazy augmented reality mirrror which… well, I’m not exactly sure what it’s for. It looks kinda fun, though.