Gesture interfaces meet MYO

Natural interfaces are something that we've been talking about for a while now and in the last years ideas and products involving or enabling them blossomed and became intertwined with our daily lives.

Even though gesture interfaces had been in the field for around 3 decades, even 10 years ago it was hard for common people to think we would all have handheld devices gesture controlled in our pockets today. Yet we do. The iPhone was a great innovation that pushed technology to take a huge leap forward.

But iPhone was just the first step.
Wii first and then Kinect completely changed how games have been played.

Touch interface has been transferred to computers as well (just think of the Touch pad first or at the latest Microsoft Surface & Asus Pads) and Leap promises to transfer the gestural kind of experience to a computer screen as well.

Yet, somehow, technology has always been a strong enabler: we must touch a screen or have a camera looking at us & be in a specific space region in order to transform our actions into behaviour. Quite far from the "feels like magic" idea of great design, ain't it?

I believe the game is getting tougher now that a new competitor has shown up. MYO define itself as "The next generation of gesture control" and it's not hard to believe them!

MYO is nothing more than an armband (plus valuable APIs) which allows you to behave as a human controller to any device - once a set of movements has been linked to specific behaviours (and you know what does what - yes, this is not really "natural" as Norman says), you can just control the program/device by just moving your arm. In this case you wear the controller, which is much less constraining than ever.

Have a look at their video to understand its potential:

If this strikes an inner cord of yours, just go ahead and preorder one: you still have more than half a year to think of how to make use of it - the first products will ship in late 2013. What are you waiting for, then?