Look Mom! No hands! (... on the keyboard)

It appears you no longer have to have your “fingers on the keyboard.” Gesture-based computing is here. We have seen it hit the consumer market in products like Kinect for gaming consoles. But what about its application in the business environment?

One of our companies has been experimenting with a gesture-based computing business application in a type of “skunk works” development environment. Last spring in fact I had the opportunity to demonstrate the beta project to hundreds of customers at an annual User Conference.

I was gesturing wildly on stage and building up quite a sweat. But the application, well, it only kind of worked. So while the technology is impressive, I’m not sure it’s ready for a mainstream business application yet.

Your Turn

What do you think? Does gesture-based computing have a role to play in business applications? Or should it remain a consumer-based technology?