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UI Could Develop Your “Sixth Sense”

Thursday, March 12th, 2009 at 9:25 am by Jamie

There is user interface design that changes the way in which we interact with data, like Siftables, and there’s user interface design that changes the way in which we interact with the world.

Using off-the-shelf technology totaling $350 in cost, Pranav Mistry at MIT Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces Group developed a wearable device that overlays meta data over pretty much anything it recognizes. Enter the Sixth Sense.

This sort of reminds me of Sekai for the iPhone that uses GPS to allow you to view tags on locations through your iPhone. Except Sixth Sense kicks that idea up to notches only seen in sci-fi. Imagine going to the store and looking for a brand of toilet paper with the softest touch. Normally, you might consult your latest Consumer Reports or scour the internet for softness reviews, but your local grocery store never posts reviews of products. With Sixth Sense, when you pick up a package of TP, the device can project customer reviews right there on the product to help you make your choice.

The demonstration is brilliant. I love the watch interface where you just draw a circle around your wrist and Sixth Sense projects a watch. The phone is also quite spiffy. The possibilities for this tech are vast and, as it turns out, fairly affordable. I’d love to see a commercial version of Sixth Sense come to market within the next few years.

Source: TED

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 12th, 2009 at 9:25 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

  • Kevin

    I’m curios as to how to invest in something like this. Could I donate say five hundred dollars, get a copy and get updates as well? Otherwise I’ll just have to wait until some hardware company develops it, phone companies are probably going to tank with the new taxes leveled at them and a lot of companies probably won’t want to sell a product that people won’t want to upgrade after a while. How does TED work for investment dealies?

  • Cortharis

    I am highly skeptical about it’s value as a real world applications. In theory it would seem nice, but at the same time, it seems like it could bring down personal independence and choice making logics. As is, an opinion you don’t have yet in the world is now mostly influenced on the opinions of others in the world and this seems like it would limit people’s ability to think on their own because it would litterally be projecting other people’s opinions onto things.

    And as well it brings up a point about techonologial dependance and items of truth, because what if this system is turned into something that projects the wrong opinion or a misguided one?

  • Serra

    I’ve been wanting something like that for a while.

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