Gestural & Natural User Interfaces

Set at the Cal Design Lab at the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley, this workshop will explore how to design natural user interfaces that are, in fact, natural. Physical interfaces are understood, learned and experienced through the body and should allow for more natural interactions that fit the way we think. Workshop participants interested in responsive environments, interactive displays, gesture, touch and haptics will learn how to prototype interfaces, design gestural languages, and test and refine designs with user testing. Participants will be given tutorials in gestural prototyping technologies, understanding the context of use, and user experience design. Workshop exercises include designing context-based gesture sets using the Kinect, and developing screen based gestures using the LEAP SDK. This workshop will be led by Jody Medich, a visual and sensory designer; most notably, she was the Global Designer Director at Cadillac.com as well as the former creative director at Yahoo!. The 2013 Cal Design Lab will include the following workshops: Expressive Movement in Architecture and Design (July 15-19), Robotic Prototypes in Architecture (July 22-26), and Frontiers in Desktop Fabrication (July 29-August 2). Each one-week workshop is designed by an expert in the topic domain that is pushing the boundaries of making, and features a combination of informational lectures, structured hands-on learning activities and self-directed open-ended experimentation. For more info, please visit: http://ced.berkeley.edu/academics/summer-programs/design-futures-workshop-series/.