Strata

"What comes after multi-touch?"

During a 3-hour brainstorming session, I and two other designers came up with a new UX concept of a concentric-ringed UI. I was curious about what interactions would invoke this contextual on-screen interface. Noticing where my fingers naturally fell on the backside of the phone it hit me — why not create a touch-enabled depressed registration point that fingers could easily find.

Project Rubik

Project Rubik (Kinetic UI) explored the intersection of the mobile GUI and new physical input methods. The project lead to a series of experiments that looked to answer: "What comes after multi-touch?" During a brainstorming session in which concentric Saturn like ring were conceived for the GUI, I came up with the concept of a touch-enabled depression on the back of the device to initiate and control the on-screen interface.

Concept Evolution

This later evolved into having a touchpad with stratified rings that were each touch-sensitive and enabled a different interaction in context with the task at hand. This allowed for interactions not restricted to just one app, but across the OS. This concept has a few implications for single-handed use cases.

Outcomes

For one, it means that you can interact with whatever is on your phone's screen without obscuring the view of it with a finger or hand like every single touch-screen phone today requires. Second, imagine if you had limited use of a second hand from an injury or disability? Third, it could be more finite control over a small detailed interaction such as exact scrolling or selecting text for copy and paste functions for example — no more obscuring what it is you're trying to select.