How Argodesign Will Help Magic Leap Design the Appearance of Spatial Computing

Jared Ficklin, a creative technologist and partner at Argodesign, a product design consultancy, was one of the most interesting presentations last week at the Magic Leap three-hour press conference. The Ficklin company is committed to helping Magic Leap, the creator of new augmented reality glasses, in the creation of a next-generation user interface for "space computing", in which the Digital animations are superimposed and visible through the AR glasses. .

At Magic Leap L.E.A.P. At the conference, Ficklin showed a funny video showing people looking at their smartphones and getting into reality because they did not see the world around them. A guy enters a fountain. Another enters a sign. With AR on Magic Leap One Creator Edition, you are connected to both the virtual world and the real world, so such things are not supposed to happen. You can use your own voice to ask for something that you see and the answer will appear before your eyes on the screen.

For Ficklin, this type of computing represents a rare chance to redo our relationship with the world. He wants this technology to be usable, consistent, convincing and humane. Ficklin spent 14 years at Frog Design, creating products and industrial designs for HP, Microsoft, AT & T, LG, SanDisk, Motorola, and more. For many years, Jared led the opening night of SXSW Interactive, which served as an outlet for both interactive installations and a collective social experience for more than 7,000 guests.

After his speech last week, I spoke to Ficklin at the Magic Leap conference. Here is a transcript of our interview.

VentureBeat: Tell me what was your message in today 's speech.

Jared Ficklin: Yesterday, it was announced that Argodesign was now a long-term strategic design partner with Magic Leap. One of the tasks we have been working on has been the creation of the interaction model for this type of mixed-reality computing for the Magic Leap One device. How will everyone use control and the different layers of interaction in a consistent, simple and intuitive way for the user?

In many ways, this is the model that plays an important role in attracting people. We had future phones for 10 years. They had all kinds of killer apps on them. But iPhone and iOS came out with a new model for handheld computing and everyone jumped on board. We had computers for 40 years before the appearance of the mouse. There was suddenly a model that users could approach and everyone was using it.

Right now, in the world of virtual reality and resuscitation, you do not have a complete interface model that fits the type of computing you want. It's in the hands of specialists and enthusiasts. What we are trying to do with Magic Leap is to invent and perfect this model. The device has all the sensors to do it. LuminOS is an excellent base, a good start for that. It will be simple, without friction and intuitive. We use a lot of social mimicry for that, by looking at how people interact with computers and the real world, how we communicate with each other, whether they are verbal or not. We build a platform-level layer that everyone can use to build their applications.

VentureBeat: The example of something that now helps a lot to navigate or do something in Magic Leap?

Ficklin: An excellent example to come, which will be different: we have announced that we are lighting six degrees of freedom in LuminOS. This means that you have the pitch, yaw, and roll of the control upside down. You do not need any other device, just control. This means that you can invoke a radius at the end of the control and use it to point objects, grab them with the trigger and place them. You can interact with digital objects in the same way as in the real world. But you can also drag and select objects calmly.

The use cases of this software range from the menu interface, such as selecting a Netflix show, to moving objects that you used to decorate your space. It will be very important to begin to combine depth in the context of a room. Think of Spotify as a mixed reality application. You can have a menu in which you will assemble your playlist, then you can reduce it so that it becomes that pretty little tree that you have placed on your coffee table. When you leave, you pick him up and he follows you like the Minecraft dog. You still have your music with you. We need this type of model.

Another thing we need to manage here is, there is a little bit of an old-is-new-yet situation that I think is fascinating. There are whole generations who have grown up and have never made multifunction computing. They had smartphones. It's always one app at a time. Multifunction is a layer on the one where you copy and paste.

VentureBeat: have 20 open browser tabs, that sort of thing.

Ficklin: Right. If you think of the classic fear of missing an opportunity, I was talking to someone younger than me, who was telling a story. They were very focused on their smartphone. I said, "Imagine that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp are open at the same time!" You're laughing because we grew up with personal computers, laptops and desktops. But there are children like my son – he is eight years old – who have never done it. The idea of ​​being able to simultaneously open these four sites is revolutionary.

We have handheld mobile computing right now. Another way to describe this is the portable mobile computing. It's really convenient, really cool. We have already seen the gaming market, the mixed reality 3D market, but I think there will be another reason why people insist on that. This is the moment when they remember the delights of multifunction computing. That's why this input model is so important. They will move between applications.

On our laptops, one of the things we usually do is to always minimize, maximize and refocus the windows. In computer science, you move a lot more in the room. You have to lay things out and collect them, as you do on a desktop computer. Every time you work at a desk, simply place this here and bring it closer to your workplace. We have to make these types of maneuvers very easy for people. They will then engage in the way they are accustomed, browsing a menu and pulling a trigger.

VentureBeat: John Underkoffler, the designer who created the IT interface of Minority Report, recently spoke at our conference. He made this call to game developers: you have been working in the 3D worlds for so long. Can you help us invent the next generation of computer interaction? He had trouble figuring out how to navigate this type of computer.

Ficklin: I would offer two reasons for that. The first is that we are not dolphins. We see stereographically. We do not really see 3D. Take a library. We do not organize our libraries in 3D. A 3D library would be a cube of books and we could not see the books in the middle. We are neither bats nor dolphins. We organize our libraries in two dimensions. We translate around these shelves lined up with books.

It's a challenge. We need to manage our perception of what is 3D, from the human point of view, compared to what is possible in a digital space. They do not always line up. You must respect the real world, the physics of the real world. But at the same time, what is magic about these flat screens is the ease with which they can do very well the exchange of data. I no longer need to walk into a library to get all the books. You want to bring this magic, this science fiction to the user, this little friction, then a certain line in which you want to be really more 3D.

We were only talking about the spatial arrangement. This will be very important to move your work at a specific time. The second thing we like to say is that Lady Judi Dench will not be caught off guard. What this means is a certain social acceptance of what people will do with their hands. We must be very respectful of this, so that they feel comfortable to be able to use the device and interact with it. These layers will be those with which they will feel comfortable to present themselves in front of other people or with other people. It can not be too tiring. You need comfortable moments of comfort.

It's a very powerful gesture system because it's from the user's point of view. We will continue to move forward. They do not have to be a conductor, they can be human. The combination of all this is something that I would call conversational computing. It sounds like voice, except we have a conversation now and you and I use nonverbal gestures to communicate. You're nodding slowly now. You look in different directions. I could say, "Hey, could you go get me that?" And you know what I'm talking about because I pointed.

When you take the work done by Underkoffler, which involves many manipulations of gestures, and you start to combine that with the voice, the context is solved in a really human and intuitive interface. The device uses your gestures and nonverbal cues to establish half of the context. You only need to establish the other half with the voice. It will be a really interesting interface to navigate these spaces.

The other thing is that it's the size of the room. I can point across the room, even if I can only reach my hand, before having to start using a tool or projecting a spoke. This will be done. I can say, "Hey, bring that here." If you combine that with verbal command structures, it will be a really intuitive interface. The objects will participate, which was a disadvantage that you saw in the concept of Minority Report. It was an excellent system, but it was stuck against a wall. Why do not we start playing with more objects? I have this little terrarium here. My system can recognize what it is and hang a lot of interesting things about it. You could have all kinds of digital information about plants here.