STEPHEN

TRANOVICH

61

LENS

successful crowdfunding and Kickstarter

campaigns to set themselves up.

HS Is there anything you’re hoping to

see from the entrants this year? Is there

anything that you’d like to see come into

existence, but that hasn’t been

invented yet?

ST I am particularly excited

about the human-computer

interface challenge, because

I am so tired of looking at my

computer all the time. I have just

been very generally disappointed

in wearable technology and IoT

so far.

HS The Apple Watch – what problem

does that solve? It solves the problem

of you putting your hand into your

pocket, and taking your phone out.

That’s rubbish.

ST Exactly. And I feel like that’s the most

useful wearable device we’ve come up

with. And that’s a joke, completely a joke.

What I really want to see is not

a smartwatch that just pushes

notifications from my phone to my arm;

I want to see a new way of interfacing

with technology, of being productive and

being connected to the world around me

that doesn’t involve this giant array of

pixels in front of my eyes. It’s just not

working for me. I want interaction more

naturally and more effectively.

I want to see a ring that gives

us information by sending safe

and varied electrical currents

through our finger. Our bodies

can tell different electrical

stimuli much more easily than

they can variations in vibration.

Sending varied electrical stimuli

through our fingers could give

us incredible information

without the need for any screens.

How you get notifications, and

information about the world around

me without me having to stop what I’m

doing, reach in my pocket and pull out

some device. That’s what I really want

to see.

”

I am particularly excited

about the human-

computer interface

challenge, because I am

so tired of looking at my

computer all the time

”

Above

“We get a lot of entrants that plug into the

Arduino or Raspberry Pi”