SkinTrack Turns Your Arm Into a Touchpad. Here’s How It Works
The biggest problem with smartwatches, beyond the fact no one really knows what to do with them, is their small screens. Scrolling through text or swiping a notification is particularly frustrating when your finger obscures whatever it is you’re trying to see. This is why you can’t tap out a text message, let alone play games.
But some really smart designers at Carnegie Mellon’s Human Computer Interaction Group found a way of making your arm part of the user interface. Over the past few years, they’ve come up with several novel ways of thinking beyond the edges of your typical smartwatch screen. Tilting and twisting the bezel lets people control the watch like a joystick. Skin Buttons projected buttons onto the wearer’s forearm. Now there’s SkinTrack, a project that explores how your arm might function as a touchscreen for wearables.
