Pat’s Point of View

I was reading the Qantas in-flight magazine yesterday, and came across a review for the Olympus Tough Smart 1050SW which was claimed to be “astonishingly resilient to holiday rough and tumble”. And as a keen snowsports fan, it would seem to be a perfect camera for skiing. Not only is it sealed, waterproof and able to withstand freezing temperatures (which I can attest most electronic devices are not able to do) but the “entire camera body is touch-sensitive, making it easier to use [whilst wearing] gloves”.

All you need to do is touch the top of the camera to take a photo or you can select “play” mode by tapping the LCD screen. To browse to the next photo you just tilt the camera to the left or right. If only all products were this straightforward to use, and contextually respectful. I’ve not used one, so I don’t know how sophisticated it is at detecting these gestures, but it sounds perfect for snowsports. Apart from not wanting to take off your gloves because it’s cold, doing so takes precious time that might mean you miss that spectacular stack that you really want to capture forever.

This is excellent design for the context of use. There may be other cameras like this, but this is a great example of seeing the problems people have using technology, and then solving those problems in a suitable way. Well done.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 15th, 2008 at 9:04 am and is filed under Usability. If you enjoyed this post, you might also like to leave a comment, find out more about me or follow @patrickkennedy on Twitter.

You can also trackback from your own site or follow any comments made on this post through the RSS 2.0 feed.