Making Wayves
At the London leg of Steve Ballmer's recent European tour, Microsoft also showcased some examples of where its software plus services research is taking it.
One of these was a touch screen instant communication device designed to be as simple and easy to use as possible. It's codenamed Wayve and is the culmination of some research done by Microsoft's improbably named Socio-Digital Systems unit.
The thinking behind it is based around how people communicate in a domestic environment. People want to be able to create very short, informal pieces of communication with each other as they come and go and this has been identified as an under-resourced niche.
What Wayve aspires to be is, effectively, the fridge door of the digital era, on which people leave digital messages and images instead of the traditional ‘scribble it on a piece of paper and then stick it to the fridge door with a magnet' technique.
Here's a photo of a little dude writing a message on a Wayve enabled device. At time of writing there weren't any images of the user interface available, but we hope to bring you them soon.
