March 2009

Tap Is the New Click
Speaker(s): Dan Saffer
Location: GVU Center, Georgia Tech

Even though touchscreen and gestural technology has been around for decades, Nintendo's Wii, Apple’s iPhone and Microsoft Surface have heralded a new era of interaction design where gestures in space and touches on a screen will be as prominent as pointing and clicking.

But how do you create products for this new paradigm? While most of us know how to design for web and desktop applications, many are still wondering how to adequately design for interactive gestures. This talk covers the basics: ergonomics, a brief history of gestural technology, prototyping and documenting, and how to communicate the presence of a gestural interface to users.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Dan Saffer, a founder and principal designer at Kicker Studio, has designed interactive products since 1995 that are currently used by millions every day. Dan has led projects for large organizations like Nokia and Time Warner to start-ups such as Ning and Foxmarks. An international speaker and author, his acclaimed book Designing for Interaction (New Riders) has been called "a bookshelf must-have for anyone thinking of creating new designs" and has been translated into several languages. His new book, Designing Gestural Interfaces (O'Reilly) was published in December 2008.

Dan is an internationally-recognized thought leader on design who has spoken at conferences and taught workshops on interaction design all over the world. Dan's writings on design have appeared in BusinessWeek, Vitamin, and Boxes and Arrows. He has a Masters of Design in Interaction Design from Carnegie Mellon University.