This article was published on December 7, 2011

New York Times’s Reveal is the mirror of the future


New York Times’s Reveal is the mirror of the future

Reveal, created by The NY Times Company Research & Development Lab, is a mirror platform that explores the roles information and media might play in our future routines. According to the team:

We all experience the world in a highly personalized fashion. And as the physical world becomes increasingly digital, computing is becoming more connected to our physical selves.

A smart mirror like Reveal displays your heath stats, the weather and news headlines while you’re brushing your teeth. The R&D team calls this daily connection an “information routine,” and is fueled in part by the growth of advanced health and fitness tools on the market, like UP by Jawbone.

A killer feature in the Reveal is its “augmented reflection,” or the use of a semi-reflective glass surface that displays high-contrast graphics over real world objects. Dig deeper, and you’ll see that the whole experience is fully fleshed out.

Voice commands switch between views, and gestures (via an embedded Kinect) activate content, including fullscreen video messages from other mirror users.

It seems everyone’s predicting that natural use interfaces, like that of the iPad, will grow increasingly common, and the physical nature of a mirror certainly lends itself to this sort of use. Smart phones and TVs (and sneakers) are just the beginning of mankind’s love affair with technology.

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