BumpTop Prototype

If you are the type to exclaim “leave that alone!” when someone tried to clean up or “optimize” your work space, then you can surely appreciate the concept of order from chaos. Personally, my work and home desks are a jumbled mess but I know roughly where the receipts sit, where my pay stubs and statements go, and where to find a spare vacuum tube for my amp if I need it. Taking the same organization cues from physical desktops and applying it to the computer desktop, Anand Agarawala and Ravin Balakrishnan developed the BumpTop interaction interface as part of their masters thesis. Using a pen-centric approach, the engineers have created a set of gestures that result in a level of document manipulation and organization that mimics reality. The demonstration videos show a intuitive and natural movement of documents as they are dragged, shoved, and stacked on top of one another. Adhering to a realistic physics model, the documents have a reaction when they meet each other or interact with the pen (or hand). To add an additional level of complexity and completeness, Agarawala and Balakrishnan have creates contextual menus which are brought up to present the user with additional organization options. Many have claimed the paperless office never became a reality because people need that physical interaction with documents (Post-It Notes on the monitor anyone?). I think that with enough development, the BumpTop might be a step in the right direction. Check out the videos, well done.