Georg Cockburn

For a long time we had to handle interfaces that didn’t seem to be made for humans. Keyboards and other awkward input devices aren’t made for spontaneously interaction. Seemingly engineers had forgotten that we are, after all, living beings who want to touch and move things in a natural way.

Now slowly companies seem to have realized what power the gesture can have. Take Nintendo’s revolutionary WII or the iPhone and you can already see how they move consumers. They brought back real body movements into interaction design. And increasingly interfaces will be developed which offer natural movements as a way to interact with a product.

And consumers seem to like it. Take a look at this amazing Orange Interactive Shopping Window. Now AT&T has unveiled a Microsoft Surface device in 12 of their stores on April 17, 2008. Also see this demo on YouTube.

Another interesting possibility is the chance of building the same experience on- and offline: For example Publicis & Hal Riney’s site allows visitors to navigate either with their mouse or by using their hands and a webcam.

So the future of building brand touchpoints is becoming more exciting than ever with the digital and the haptic world finally merging.