Institute of Design: Motorola WNDR

Augmented Reality anyone? Created in the Fall of 2006, WNDR predated augmented reality platforms rumored by Apple or piloted by Google Glass, LAYAR and Yelp's Monocle. As I wrote back in 2007, “Virtual Reality” is set to be unleashed far from traditional desktop or even mobile phone-based computing environments. Over the next decade, trends in truly ubiquitous broadband, mobile computing power (beyond previous laptop power in a mobile phone/iPod sized device), and advanced retinal imaging will radically reshape how we interact with the world. WNDR envisions this future by imagining an overlay of relevant information directly in one's point of view. It is as if we could reach out and touch information related to our environment and change “channels” to any particular augmentation type we need.

Download a partial presentation deck (14MB) and also check out the flash prototype. My teammates were Lauren Schwendiman (now working at Google) and Gabe Biller (responsible for flash prototype programming).