How we built Flow

I love any and all attempts to develop, improve, explore, the interface between humans and computers. I think it is one of the areas where not nearly enough is being done ... as a player of the continuum fingerboard, I quickly realized that a transformation of interface can have a more dramatic and meaningful impact on sound than the actual synthesis engine.

Roger Linn used to have a great demo on his page showing him playing a prototype Linnstrument using only a sawtooth wave with a lowpass filter, and it sounded more expressive than many top of the line physical modeling synths, because the dimensions of control were so impactful.

That said, the Photoshop example you give seems a little bit of a stretch. The Wacom tablet is a wonderful piece of human interface for Photoshop that addresses many of your concerns, and many other concerns, and has existed for years. For example, some Wacom pens have a ring on them that you can use to change brush sizes.

Wacom Tablet: http://blog.phaseone.com/work-faster-by-customizing-your-wacom-tablet-in-capture-one-pro-7/ ↗

Continuum Fingerboard: http://www.hakenaudio.com/Continuum/ ↗

Linnstrument: http://www.rogerlinndesign.com/linnstrument.html ↗

Plenty of comments here on how this problem has already been solved by other devices.

This one appears to be different by allowing functionality to be extended more easily via programming. 3dconexion spacemouse for example is not that easy to interface although 3rd party programs like Glovepie do allow interfacing via simple scripts.

Wacom tablets would seem to be the most obvious existing product out there in a similar space - simple scripting can interface Wacoms with other apps like music players, so perhaps this new device isn't necessary.

Users in the video are interacting delicately, this looks like a problem - when you are zipping through interactions to achieve tasks (especially when they are repetitive) you want to be able to have good repeatability. Delicate movements here are your enemy.

I guess the TLDR of my comment is that nothing out there really solves all the issues out of the box and this one might not either unless it can build an ecosystem of drag and drop scripts for people to use for their day to day tasks.

edit: interestingly in the list of "requirements" (para 2.) the ease of installing new abilities or scripts or whatever extensions is not listed other than "it has to work with the tools we use" and in the "developers" section it should mention an "app store" otherwise no-one's gonna find that awesome Photoshop extension for it.

Love the idea! I'm always looking to see if any gesture recognition controls will take off for computers, this seems like a very good one as it doesn't involve raising your hands to any excessive degree. There have been gesture devices in the past, but they all seem to want you to raise your arms and wave them about in large-ish motions. Good to see a device that I can still rest my elbows on the desk and just wave at! I can see this becoming like a 2nd mouse to the left of my keyboard, a power device for certain apps.

I will just add one slight tip if I may. The first two sentences of this page don't really explain what the product is:

"We (YC S13) just launched our product “Flow” on Indiegogo. It’s a programmable and intuitive wireless controller that that gives you high precision and speed."

I was left wondering what it was a controller of? An RC plane? A games console? Industrial machinery? Just add "controller for your computer" and it'll read a lot better. It's not helped by the fact that the gif below only shows a hand waving over a circular thing with no visible feedback from a computer screen ;)

If you want programmable high-resolution knobs, this is an area that the music industry has had covered quite well for a long time. A quick Googling for "midi controller knob" brings up:

Livid Alias 8

Livid DS 1

Nektar Panorama P1

MIDI Fighter Twister

Behringer B-Control Rotary BCR2000

Akai LPD8

The last one is about seventy bucks and gives you eight independent knobs and eight pads.

Of course, there's value in minimalism and a good UX for configuring/programming the knob(s), but there's also something to be said for just trying to solve the problem yourself based on what's currently available. If a $70 MIDI controller makes your Photoshop experience noticeably better, great. If not, a single knob might not end up being worth it either, regardless of how well-made it is.

This looks worse than a mouse. I'm just trying to imagine how I'd use this in a game like Call of Duty or Team Fortress. The modern optical mouse gives you precise movement and acceleration in 2 dimensions. The touch surface of this thing is too small to work better than a mouse in a game situation unless you crank the sensitivity way up at the cost of accuracy.

At first I thought it would be movable and contain an optical mouse tracker underneath it, but was disappointed to see it's basically a trackpad with a wheel and a gesture sensor.

Maybe it'll work good for many apps, but it seems every time I see something that tries to improve on the old mouse, it ends up looking worse, at least for my use case.