Microsoft has started testing and also demoed new touchscreen technology that intelligently anticipates your intended action even before you touch the screen. This can call up different controls, options, or menus to suit the current task. This determines how the user is gripping the phone, as well as where the user’s fingers are approaching the display.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiZkEYLXctE
By allowing the interfaces to adapt to you, on the fly, they are always tailored to the specific context of how you are currently holding or using your phone. In a video, Ken Hinckley, principal researcher at Microsoft shows how users can access video controls that vary depending on if the phone is being held in one or both hands.
This new technology is still in developmental stage and Microsoft hasn’t revealed when it would bring to devices.
Ken Hinckley, a principal researcher at Microsoft who led the project, said:
The research is based on a whole different philosophy of interaction design. It uses the hands as a window to the mind. I think it has huge potential for the future of mobile interaction. And I say this as one of the very first people to explore the possibilities of sensors on mobile phones, including the now ubiquitous capability to sense and auto-rotate the screen orientation.