Hardware Devices: Smaller and Larger; For One or Many

Where are user interfaces headed? At Autodesk Labs and throughout the company, we are working to figure that out. There are actually two completely different technologies emerging:

1. Large collaborative screens with high costs in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
2. Smaller single-user “professional” screens with costs under a thousand dollars.

While both of these technologies are incorporating the use of multi-touch, it is for completely different purposes and different environments. Alias Fellow, Tom Wujec, points out: We live in a society of hardware devices that support different kinds of transactions. Multi-touch devices will support workflows that range from context creation to content review:

Display Size	Potential Uses
15-20”	Personal workflow for content creation (such as modeling) and personal asset manipulation (such as sorting, grouping, white boarding, storyboarding, etc.)
24”-60”	Small group workflow for context review, evaluation, and selection. Small team same-time, same-place collaboration such as storyboarding, mapping, etc.
4’-20’	Mid to large group workflow for exploration, image collaboration, what-if scenarios, etc.

Exploring the possibilities of how you would like to integrate your design data with the latest hardware devices is alive in the lab. So what size device are you looking forward to? Please tell us: thelabs@autodesk.com.