Industrial Design for Pranav Mistry's SixthSense
I was excited to learn about Pranav Mistry's invention, SixthSense, which is a gestural computer interface that turns the relationship between the computer and the user inside out. Instead of people staring into a glowing screen, the computer is required to look outward at our physical world. By cleverly combining a digital camera , a mini-projector, and a smart phone, Pranav has introduced a new future of information accessibility and of human/computer relations. See his presentation on TED.com if you haven't already. However, this is still a prototype, albeit a brilliantly engineered one, it is clunky, awkward and heavy. Seeing this opportunity, I challenged my Junior (3rd year) industrial design students at Western Washington University to design the SixthSense for ergonomics, ease of use, and aesthetics. They were to focus on a specific user scenario and they had to use currently available components, which were fixed in size. (No imaginary miniature electronic com