Multitouch by Bump Technologies

[The Watcher]

Bump jumps into 'multitouch' with both hands

Omar El Akkad
Globe and Mail Update Last updated on Monday, Oct. 05, 2009 11:25PM EDT


Almost since the dawn of the personal computer age, users have interacted with their machines in two ways – with a hand clawed around a mouse or fingers hovering over A-through-F and J-through-semicolon on a keyboard.

But those two long-time methods of digital input may soon have competition, as developers flock to a new technology that lets users move files across their screen the same way they'd move chips across a poker table.

“Multitouch” computing allows a user to shove, stretch, rotate and perform all manner of physical-digital activity by moving multiple fingers across a screen at once. For years, it has been confined to applications that recognize only one or two hand movements. But with the release of Windows 7 – which offers multitouch support – more developers are starting to build software and hardware that takes advantage of the technology.

A Toronto-based startup is leading the way, generating a lot of buzz for a multitouch technology that utilizes hand gestures involving more than two fingers –a rarity in the field.


“If you put a touch device in front of someone who's non-technical, they actually really enjoy it,” says Nina Sodhi, chief operating officer of Toronto-based Bump Technologies Inc. “Whereas if you put something that's equally as technically sophisticated but harder to conceptualize in front of the same person, they're a little less interested.”

Anyone who has ever played around with an iPhone will be familiar with multitouch computing – shrinking or expanding a photo by placing two fingers on it and moving them closer together or further apart, for example. But most multitouch applications have maxed out at two fingers. The technological leap required to recognize more digits simultaneously is a relatively big one.

That's what makes Bump Technologies Inc.'s new software so interesting.
The small Toronto company garnered a cult following with the release of BumpTop, a program that morphs a regular desktop into a three-dimensional workspace. For their new version – designed for Windows 7, which comes out later this month – the makers of BumpTop included multitouch capabilities, including “gestures” that rely on more than two fingers at a time.

Take “scrunching,” for example. A user places their fingers on the screen around a smattering of files, and begins moving those fingers closer together. In the process, all the files are pushed together into one pile on the desktop.

Many of BumpTop's gestures get at the heart of what multitouch computing does best – mimicking real-life interactions. To crop a photo using the software, a user places one finger down to “anchor” the photo, and then runs another finger down or across the image – a motion similar to tearing a piece of paper. The more gestures a software developer can implement, the more versatile their software – but a gesture can prove useless if the motion isn't intuitive or in sync with real life.

“[Writing the software] is kind of a creative process, you can't just sit down and code away,” Ms. Sodhi says. “You really have to think about touch, how it works and what kind of human-computer interaction you want to have.”

The release of Windows 7 this month is expected to unleash a wave of new multitouch applications. For the firms investing millions of dollars into the technology, touch computing represents another step in one of the tech industry's overriding trends: The movement to simplify gadgets as much as possible, broadening their appeal to users who aren't at all tech savvy.

“It gets to the point where you forget you're dealing with technology, and you're doing activities … but they're complemented by that technology layer,” says August de los Reyes, principal design director of Microsoft's Surface, a “tabletop computer” that utilizes multitouch computing to let users do everything from finger painting to sliding pictures between mobile devices placed on the tabletop.

To explain why technologies such as the Surface can have such broad appeal, Mr. de los Reyes points to his own mother, who he says never quite understood what it is he did for a living. That all changed when he showed her the multitouch device, and let her use a piece of art software on it.

“When I sat her down in front of a Surface unit and she started playing with a paint product, she finally got it,” he says.

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