Leap Motion Technology- Future of Input Devices

As of this week Minority Report has arrived. Pre-orders of the Leap Motion Controller – which was privately funded and allows you to control your computer using gestures in the air, within a volume of eight cubic feet – are slowly being delivered in the US, and as of Monday it is available in Britain on Amazon.

If you've used a device with a screen in the last few years you'll have noticed that almost everything you click or tap seems to have a conspicuous reaction, something I'm fairly sure we're getting more than a little tired of. Blame the movies – everything has a licence to beep and jiggle in Tony Stark's garage. With the advent of Leap, designers and developers have been forced to return to a simpler time; where that mandatory jiggle and bounce has been toned down in order for users to grapple with a new "interaction paradigm".

The first step with all new technologies is usually user friendly; the tech is still very much prototypical. Good enough to spin a sphere, but perhaps not yet to control your diary.

The era of gesture control that will be enabled by Leap tech, and what comes after it, will yield more useful interactions. Siri and, more recently, the successful integration of Voice Search in Google products, are preparing us for the next step in interaction development. As with voice recognition, we should prime ourselves for the inevitable growing pains. Further configurations of these technologies will gradually embed themselves in our lives.