Multi-Touch and Multi-User: A Gestural Interface Workshop June 27, 2011

Within one year, gestural interfaces such as touch screens, track pads, and infrared tracking cameras reached mainstream adoption and reshaped the way we interact with computers of all kinds. The implications for devices, entertainment, and public spaces are vast.

Multi-touch screens have been in use in specialized instances for a few years, especially in the museum sector, and in 2010 the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Open Exhibits, an open source multitouch SDK for Flash that is free for museums, students, nonprofits, and educational use. The Open Exhibits SDK (Core) is free for educational and non-commercial use. Commercial projects and work for hire requires GestureWorks in order to use Open Exhibits software, but the gesture library, templates, and modules are open source and free for commercial use.

Templates allow novices to create their own floor or Web based-exhibits. Universal Modules allow more advanced developers to combine, branch, and write their own modules that can act as building blocks for new Exhibits.

GestureWorks’ open source gesture library features over 200 gestures, far more than any other multitouch framework built for Flash. With this open source gesture library, developers can create applications that tilt in 3 dimensions, recognize characters, symbols, and shapes or even create your own gestures. A new utility, MT-Kinect, enables the development of multitouch applications with the Microsoft Kinect that use gesturing rather than direct touches.

Basic modifications to the code and content can be done by editing a simple XML text file, making development rapid and accessible even for non-programmers. In this session, learn the basic structure of Open Exhibits and how it can be used to create impressive interactive content, across a variety of devices.

* Get there early for a Free Multi Touch gesture poster.

Jim Spadaccini

Jim is the director of Ideum. He is currently the Principal Investigator of a major National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored project, Open Exhibits. He is also a Principal Investigator on a NASA educational project, Space Weather Mobile, and a Co-PI on a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) sponsored project, Hurricanes and Climate Change.

Before founding Ideum, Jim was the Director of Interactive Media at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. While at the Exploratorium, his department was responsible for developing educational Web resources and media exhibits for the museum floor. For his work at the Exploratorium, he received a Smithsonian Computerworld Award, an Association of Science and Technology Centers Award for Innovation and three consecutive Webby Awards for “Best Science Site.” Jim taught courses on design and technology at SFSU’s Multimedia Studies Program for seven years starting in the mid-90s and currently teaches for the Cultural Resource Management Program at University of Victoria, British Columbia and the Technology-Enhanced Communication for Cultural Heritage (TEC-CH) program at the University of Lugano, Switzerland.

Pillsbury Winthrop Office Silicon Valley

2475 Hanover Street

Palo Alto, CA 94304-1114

6:30 PM Registration and Networking

7:00 PM -8:40 PM Presentations

$20 at the door for non-SDForum members

No charge for SDForum members

No registration required