“Dale Herigstad & Schematic: Creative Inspirations” was a very absorbing documentary. “Innovation” is the keyword that was resonating all throughout the documentary and the interviews. One can feel that Dale Herigstad, Chief Creative Officer, is truly a charismatic visionary: his co-workers attest to that fact in many words. I found a lot of interesting and fascinating things in what Dale and his team had to present.
The ideas of distance gesture and touch gesture for navigation are very cool indeed. Touch gesture has been very much incorporated in our interaction with new media technologies, while distance gesture is fast becoming a reality. Kinect is all about that and more. It is being used not only for entertainment, but also in the field of health, arts, for coping with disability etc. The future is wide open for that kind of technological innovation.
Dale’s Schematic believes in pursuing innovation at all costs. They keep pushing their clients rather than allowing the clients to push them around – and that I believe is what helps them to stay several steps ahead of others in interface design and technology. Their approach in giving importance to users and their experience assures them of ultimate success.
The fact that Schematic gives tremendous importance to design is evident from the statement Dale made about the interface being the brand.
The idea of “Z space” as Dale explained is also very innovative, and an effective way of experiencing the digital world. In fact the concept of multidmensional interface design is mind boggling in the abstract. But experiencing it in action makes it feel so natural. I was just wondering what sort of softwares they use, or what sort of programming code they put in motion at Schematic in order to achieve those magical multidimensional movements!
The documentary helps to perceive the dynamics behind the projects of Schematic: they try to enable information to flow seamlessly between Web, Mobile and TV, and whatever other platforms there may be. It is their attempt to make systems that work fluidly from one platform to another that sets them apart from other firms.
There was one item in their innovative projects which somehow did not impress me very much: gestural navigation for operating Television – i.e., merely using hands, without using any accessory a la’ Minority Report (Dale is said to be the brain behind that concept in that movie too). To me it seems a bit cumbersome job to be sitting and gesticulating one’s limbs while watching a program, to make the hardware do what one wants. I would definitely prefer something more subtle like what I had seen in the news a few days ago: a quadriplegic playing a virtual violin merely by making subtle movements of the head. This innovative instrument, a VMI (virtual Musical Instrument) will be making its debut in Montreal in the coming week, according to this news report in the Huffington Post.
I would like that kind of subtle gesture for navigating the TV and web. The documentary on Schematic tells me that that kind of interface design is not very far off for interactive media.