Skinput: Advangages and Disadvantages

Skinput is a new technology that will turn out skin into a touchscreen interface menu for our portable devices such as our cell phone or MP3 player.

Advantages:

• easy to access when your phone is not available
• allows users to interact more personally with their device
• larger buttons to reduce the risk of pressing the wrong buttons
• through the use of a sense called proprioception after user learns where the locations are on the skin they will no longer have to look down to use Skinput reducing people looking down at their phone while driving
• It can be used for a more interactive gaming experience

Disadvantages

• Currently there are only five buttons. A phone uses at least 10 buttons to dial a phone number of send a text message
• The easy accessibility will cause people to be more socially distracted
• If the user has more than a 30% Body Mass Index Skinput is reduced to 80% accuracy
• The arm band is currently bulky
• the visibility of the projection of the buttons on the skin can be reduced if the user has a tattoo located on their arm