17 October 2014

Brainstorming



Good interactive devices come from good ideas. To help come up with good ideas, my group and I undertook brainstorming. Before brainstorming as a group, we had time to individually come up with ideas.

Some of the ideas I came up with included:
  1. Smart pens that use text prediction to work out the word you  are trying to write and guide you to write it.
  2. Using accelerometers on wearable smartwatches as an input device.
  3. An interactive device that can be used in the self-driving cars of the (near-)future.
With all the ideas both myself and my team came up with, we were able to have some really thought-provoking discussions on the ideas. Through an iterative process, we were able to improve on the initial ideas.

I will describe two of the ideas I heard that I really liked and try and develop them a bit here:
  1. Customised virtual keyboards
  2. Smart pens

Customised virtual keyboards

This idea involved having a virtual keyboard that is individual to each user. The virtual keyboard will learn how its user types characters. The benefits of this type of keyboard is that the user should be able to type faster as they press where they expect a key to be and the system will recognise what key they tried to press.

This could be great on transport where there is often limited space and lots of movement that can affect typing accuracy. A further extension of this is having pressure sensitive pads that a user places on each of their fingertips. By pressing your fingertips to a surface, you can type away!

Smart pens

This idea involved a smart pen that has physical feedback built-in so it can guide you as you write. It would use text prediction to work out the word you are trying to write and help you write it.

Possible use cases for this are:
  1.  to help you write faster
  2. to help young children when learning to write
  3. to teach  writing of a new language
  4. to help less-able people to be able to write

The brainstorming session allowed us to explore ideas that we would not have otherwise thought of. Brainstorming is definitely a technique to remember to use next time!

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