I was thrilled to see Obama’s inauguration ceremony, not only because of his charisma and what he represents, but also because it was the beginning of a digital era in the presidency of the United States. The White House changed its website to a more collaborative one and CNN joined Microsoft to use Photosynth (MS’s latest photo 3D navigation technology) as an interactive collective album dedicated to the ceremony.

The result was amazing, a very rich collection of pictures of D.C. the Mall sent by people that were there at that very specific moment. I may say that even though the technology was not new for me (as I´ve seen some videos about it before), that was the moment where it really caught my attention.

Later on I thought – Why not use YDreams’ hardware solutions to interact with such a rich interface? In the same week I got a call from Rene de Paula, a Microsoft Brasil User Experience Evangelist, asking for a meeting. What a coincidence. I had no doubt, he needed to see this idea working. So I teamed up with Renan at our Rio de Janeiro office to build this prototype.

The main idea was to use hand gestures to control the navigation in a more appealing scenario than a computer desk. This video illustrates the result, I hope you all enjoy it.

Tags: brasil, gesture navigation, microsoft, photosynth, YDreams

This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 12:29 and is filed under Interactive Environments, Products & Projects, Science & Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.