The latest issue of the Communications of the ACM focuses on “Organic User Interfaces,” and includes a short article we wrote about various display technologies. The term “organic” in this context refers, not to chemical composition, but to the physical flexibility and non-planarity of form that are becoming achievable for computational devices. As devices become less rigid and regular, our interactions with them can become so as well.

Having personally sewn hard, rectangular PCBs into hidden pockets to simulate flexible electronics, as well as worn a rigid (and heavy) LCD on my back for another research project, it’s very cool to see so much focus, design and technology-wise, on materiality.

There’s a website organized around this issue, with online versions of all the articles plus additional links and a blog, at organicui.org

We recently wrapped up a project that utilized EM-X270, a small embedded Linux development board by Compulab. The board is powered by Intel’s PXA270 CPU and designed as a handheld computer or cellphone platform with features like 512Mb Flash, Wi-Fi, GPS, SD card, 3.5″ LCD, Cellular voice and GPRS modem, all in a 97×66mm package. Compulab sells a (somewhat pricey) EM-X270 dev kit that comes with a guarantee of one-year email support, including help with LCD driver development.

Although we did not require all its built-in capabilities, we decided to go with the EM-X270 since it came with a working version of X Windows environment based on Ångström Linux distribution. After installing necessary libraries, we were able to get some graphics programs running pretty quickly. We started out testing the speedy DirectFB library first, then switched to Cairo for its higher level functions.

Our project also involved interfacing custom-designed electronics and a larger LCD to EM-X270. This was a bit more challenging due to the fact that Compulab does not release schematics documentation on their board. Their support proved reliable overall, but very slow to respond at times. An additional hardware issue were some problems with WiFi connections, which are alluded to in product documentation but did not seem to be fully resolved.

The final result of the project was a handheld device prototype that utilized motion sensing and sound (via custom hardware) as an input to several graphic programs that explored interface and visual feedback ideas for interactions like tilting the device, moving it in 3 dimensions, shaking, etc. More project details coming soon..