The Kicker Tactile Touchscreen Reader
A Touchscreen Interface for the Blind
Now that technology is increasingly accessed through touch, isn’t it odd that it all feels like glass? Technology is at our fingertips. How can we use the sense of touch to control it?
Several recent studies, the latest published in June 2011 in Science, have shown that we as humans take in information with our whole body. We see this as an opportunity to develop alternative channels for intefacing with technology beyond visual and audio. At Kicker Studio, we have been working with haptics (vibrotactile feedback) for a few years now, and have become very interested in touch as a method of communication. We decided to investigate and develop a baseline vernacular for tactile interface for digital devices. We started by talking to the blind.
The case of Tea meets Tech
The Kicker Tea Tumbler
At Kicker Studio, we use technology as a raw material. Rather than trying to isolate it to a screen based ‘device’, we believe technology can be added into the real world in order to make objects smart. Much as an alloy strengthens metal, technology can enhance any object. To make it better. Streamlined. More efficient. In other words, technology gives great tools an added kick.
To put our thinking to the test, we set about imagining how technology could influence a topic purposefully devoid of technology – tea.
Artificial Muscle: Designing for Haptics
How can haptics (vibrotactile feedback) improve our experience of touchscreen products?
That’s what we set out to explore when Artificial Muscle, Inc. approached us to play with their haptics. They wondered how their technology could be used on a mobile phone. Kicker Studio wanted to know if haptics could improve the mobile user experience. We decided to look at the common everyday activity of making a conference call on a mobile phone and see where tactile feedback would be the most effective.
Kicker Conference Phone
Conference phones suck. That's what nearly everyone told us when we started talking to them about how they used their phones—often specifically designed, very expensive phones—for conference calls. We knew this, of course, since we've used and disliked them before ourselves (and probably you have too). That's why we decided to design a new VOIP conference phone for small businesses.
Bonnier's Mag+2: Digital Magazines for iPad
In late 2009, Swedish magazine publisher Bonnier and London design studio BERG created Mag+, a concept for magzines on tablet computers like the iPad. The next step was to use this metaphor with actual magazine content. Bonnier asked Kicker to prototype digital solutions using actual magazine content. So in early 2010, we set about to create Mag+2.
Gestural Entertainment Center for Canesta
Canesta, Inc. (recently acquired by Microsoft) is the inventor of revolutionary, low-cost electronic perception technology that enables ordinary electronic devices in consumer, security, industrial, medical, automotive, factory automation, gaming, military, and many other applications to perceive and react to objects or individuals in real time. In Fall 2008, Canesta approached Kicker Studio to create a demonstration of their latest camera technology for the Consumer Electronics Show 2009. The prototype was to be of an entertainment center controlled by gestures alone, and powered, of course, by a Canesta camera.
Yolink: The Future of Find
Yolink’s search technology makes information finding faster. Our relationship with TigerLogic’s yolink began as a quick design project, and grew into a strategic partnership, across a multi-platform product suite including web, desktop, and mobile find tools.
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