Will the Leap Motion Controller change how we use computers?
L33tdawg: I received my Leap Motion last week as well and having played with it a bit I'll just say that we're a long ways away from a Minority Report experience. Don't get me wrong; it's an awesome piece of tech, but it's going to need a lot of sofware updates.
When John Underkoffler was designing the interface for the film Minority Report, Steven Spielberg told him it should look like the characters were "conducting an orchestra". Now that's a beautiful vision. The gestural control of the future should not be tiring or bothersome, but elegant and accurate.
As of this week Minority Report has arrived. Or you can pretend to be Iron Man's alter-ego Tony Stark (but sadly without the ability to control multimillion-dollar robots and body armour). Pre-orders of the Leap Motion Controller – which was funded by Kickstarter investors and allows you to control your computer using gestures in the air, within a volume of eight cubic feet – are slowly being delivered in the US, and as of Monday it is available in Britain on Amazon.
If you've used a device with a screen in the last few years you'll have noticed that almost everything you click or tap seems to have a conspicuous reaction, something I'm fairly sure we're getting more than a little tired of. Blame the movies – everything has a licence to beep and jiggle in Tony Stark's garage. With the advent of Leap, designers and developers have been forced to return to a simpler time; where that mandatory jiggle and bounce has been toned down in order for users to grapple with a new "interaction paradigm".
