Brief Description of My Essay on Skinput

The portable electronic devices realm is approaching a simple yet inevitable dilemma as the demand to make smaller devices increases. With every downsizing of a portable device comes the downsizing of its buttons. The problem with this is that human fingers will always be about the same size. This becomes particularly evident as these portable devices allow users to be able to do more complicated commands. The smaller buttons cause the user to often select the wrong thing, misspell text messages or dial the wrong number. However, Carnegie Mellon doctoral student, Chris Harrison has created a cure to the teeny tiny button dilemma even going as far as making devices more convenient than ever before. Harrison said, “Our computers are getting faster, have more hard drive and more options for us to use. That changes all the time. The things that haven’t changed are our finger size and the available surface area. We can’t engineer our way out of that” (Hamill, 2010). His solution, Skinput, allows the user to interface with their devices by using their own skin.

Sean D. Hamill. (12 April). The next computer frontier: Your skin: Carnegie Mellon doctoral student has big plans for the way we input information. McClatchy - Tribune Business News. Proquest Research database, http://proquest.umi.com.mutex.gmu.edu/login , Retrieved March 12, 2012, from ABI/INFORM Dateline. (Document ID: 2006625761).