the story of a Masters Thesis for Interaction Design in Malmö Sweden

I place the TRKBRD design as the “ground zero” example of Stacked User Inputs (SUI). This prototype sparked the SUI for me, and inspired me to investigate it more for my final thesis.

The hardware design of the TRKBRD places an invisible light field over the keyboard, thus creating a “touch field” on top of the entire keyboard.

TRKBRD Top View

The purple area below is the “button level” of the SUI, where a user can interact with the keyboard input.

TRKBRD Top View: button level

The orange area is the “touch level” of the SUI, where a user can interact with the cursor and control the cursor position and action.

TRKBRD Top View: touch level

TRKBRD Side View

Physical button level of the SUI.

TRKBRD Side View: button level

Invisible touch field level of the SUI.

TRKBRD Side View: touch level

Both levels, creating two independent levels of interaction, controlling two independent inputs for the portable computer.

TRKBRD Side View: SUI levels