Binding Knobs and Dials to Multitouch

Multitouch, by nature, is an imprecise method of interacting with data. Your fingers on a touch surface are not capable of extreem precision and for the most part that's not an issue. But sometimes you need to do very precise work such as is the case with mechanical or electrical design.

To deal with scenarios where precision is needed, its possible to bind tangible tools with software actions on a multitouch screen. For example, it will be come common practice to use a stylus in combination with multitouch devices for productivity applications. A draftsmen or designer might have several different stylus, or a configurable stylus, for different line thicknesses or types of strokes.

There will also be a need to bind buttons, knobs, and dials to multitouch surfaces in order to get more precise control over the content being edited or manipulated. While Microsoft Surface allows you to do this today with tagged objects, the precision is not that great. In an article published on TechFlash, Microsoft engineers talk about a research project that dynamically binds software operations to hardware controls. It's being presented at CHI 2009 in Boston this week.

In my opinion, this has enormous potential for productivity applications as well as precise controllers and monitors used in industry. Multitouch by itself has limited applications but when combined with tangible controllers it creates a very expressive human-computer interaction.