H12 Innovative Appearance *

The WorldBeat music exhibit uses infrared batons as input devices. They are unlike anything visitors have normally used up to now to interact with a computer, which makes the exhibit look interesting and promises an experience from which something new can be learned.

The Virtual Vienna city tour uses a custom-designed NaviPad to move around in the three-dimensional photorealistic panoramas. The same degrees of freedom could be made accessible through a standard joystick and additional slider, but they would not only be less appropriate for the domain of a city tour, but also less innovative for visitors than a custom-designed device. It is often enough to "wrap" standard devices into an innovative outer shape to decouple the impression of the system from known modes of interaction.

The Brain Opera music exhibit by the MIT Media Lab features, among other parts, large rubber forms resembling ears, noses, etc. that can be punched and pressed by visitors to create various sounds (see the opening picture). The shape and physical mode of operation of these input devices alone are intriguing enough to attract people to use this exhibit who would hardly have stopped to achieve the same results at a computer exibit solely equipped with mouse and keyboard.