I don't see the mouse going away, I tend to view gestures like Wii Devices, operating in a bigger space. I don't see many playing wii tennis in a chair, and I don't see many mouse+keyboard while standing up.
Having played with mulittouch (owned a TouchStream keyboard/mouse), played with FIR, webcams, there are many issues with gestural based input that aren't easy to solve, one of the most obvious is a lack of tactile feedback. Increased errors as fingers/arms drift for programs that track gestures on a static position. Stacking gestures also produces more lag and errors, e.g. did you mean o, O or 0? or C etc. Leading to a conversation with misunderstandings with the interface rather than a 1 to 1 deterministic device like mouse and keyboard. There are some solutions to this, but I believe the IO between device and application has to be bidirectional, meaning that the gestures available are based on the context of what you are working with ...like lateral inhibition in the brain. The mouse as much as it's malaligned can do single point gestures, if two mice existed two point gestures (move, scale, rotate, etc) and can support chording with buttons. A mouse or trackball at at rest is one of the lowest energy and most comfortable as it conforms to the hand. The pinky/ring finger aren't well suited to doing any heavy work. The biggest RSI issues are from overuse of the index finger which can be solved with zero contact switches (like the touchstream), or hand/foot clicks, poor workspace design, in particular the distance between keyboard,mouse and reach. ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
