If you’re attending, be sure to visit us at the Technology Lab.

Any individual wishing to learn about Agility, that is:  ScrumMasters, XP coaches, trainers, change agents, mentors should plan to attend.

We hope to see you there!

“We are excited to harness the power of GPGPU Chips using the OpenCL specification for embedded platforms to enable us to design and develop richer natural user experiences,” said YOUi Labs CEO Jason Flick.

NUIs must perform without hesitation and require more graphical processing power than traditional UIs. Unlike video games, however, a NUI’s content is not predictable and can not be cached or pre-processed. Due to this real-time content requirement, both CPU and GPU utilization must be carefully balanced to maximize NUI performance.

“The adoption of GPGPU and the Khronos OpenCL specification will enable us to offload precious CPU cycles traditionally required to perform real-time calculation on larger data sets to more efficient GPGPU cores speeding up the UI and saving power,” said YOUi Labs CTO Stuart Russell.

YOUi Labs is deep into the implementation of the strategies discussed in this white paper and will publish the technical results for performance benchmarks and power usage in the coming months.

The “Levering GPGPU and OpenCL Technologies for Natural User Interfaces” white paper is available as a public download from the YOUi Labs website (www.youilabs.com) as well as The Khronos Group website http://www.khronos.org.

About YOUi Labs
When art meets science, something great happens. We live at that intersection. We’re a unique blend of math and physics engineers, visual artists and interaction designers who understand the true value of a great user experience. YOUi Labs (www.youilabs.com) exists to teach device manufacturers the new rules governing intimate user interfaces so they can swiftly meet – even exceed – their customers’ new expectations. We build the products that do that.

About The Khronos Group
The Khronos Group is an industry consortium creating open standards to enable the authoring and acceleration of graphics, parallel computing, dynamic media and sensor processing on a wide variety of platforms and devices. Khronos standards include OpenGL, OpenGL ES, WebGL, WebCL, OpenCL, OpenMAX, OpenVG, OpenSL ES, OpenKODE, StreamInput and COLLADA. All Khronos members are able to contribute to the development of Khronos specifications, are empowered to vote at various stages before public deployment, and are able to accelerate the delivery of their cutting-edge media platforms and applications through early access to specification drafts and conformance tests. More information is available at www.khronos.org.

(YOUi Labs is a registered trade mark of YOUi Labs Inc. Other names used here may be registered trademarks of their respective owners.)

For more information, media and analysts please contact:
Francis Moran, CMO, YOUi Labs
francis@francis-moran.com

Twitter: @youilabs

Mobile World Congress will be held from February 27th to March 1st in Barcelona.

Abstract

Natural User Interfaces (NUIs) are vastly more complex than traditional graphical user interfaces
and require large computational power to provide an immersive experience for the user. We will
examine NUI improvements and design challenges over traditional Graphical User Interfaces
and the associated computational complexities encountered during implementation. In order to
maximize the hardware’s capability for a NUI, making use of available Graphics Processing Unit
(GPU) cycles to complement the Central Processing Unit (CPU) is crucial. This process of using
GPUs as General Purpose Graphics Processing Units (GPGPU) has been traditionally limited to
desktop computing platforms, but as portable devices are becoming more powerful,
encompassing multiple-core CPU and GPU elements, implementation becomes crucial for
efficient use of the hardware’s capability. When effectively utilizing both the GPU and CPU
cycles a smooth, fluid experience can be maintained, as well as optimization for best case power
consumption. This can be very challenging due to platform constraints, differing CPU / GPU
architectures, implementation complexity and cost of integration. We will examine a few aspects
of a NUI that could benefit from GPGPU computing and the associated implementation benefits.

GPGPU

“GPGPU stands for General-Purpose computation on Graphics Processing
Units. Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) are high-performance many-core
processors that can be used to accelerate a wide range of applications.”
-http://gpgpu.org/

NUI

“A natural user interface is a user interface designed to use natural human
behaviors for interacting directly with content”
-http://nui.joshland.org

“A NUI relies on a user being able to carry out relatively natural motions,
movements or gestures that they quickly discover control the computer
application or manipulate the digital content.”
-http://nuigroup.com

“We started with Command-line Interfaces in the 60s, and then moved to GUIs
in the 80s, and we have just entered into the next 25 year evolution – the era of
the NUI”
– Jason Flick, CEO, YOUi Labs.

]]> http://youilabs.com/levering-gpgpu-and-opencl-technologies-for-natural-user-interfaces-a-you-i-labs-white-paper/feed/ 0 http://www.mobileworldcongress.com/index.html http://www.mobileworldcongress.com/index.html#comments Thu, 23 Feb 2012 07:42:24 +0000 admin http://craighooghiem.com/youi/?p=611 http://www.mobileworldcongress.com/index.html/feed/ 0 http://youilabs.com/ottawa-startup-brings-iphone-like-ui-to-any-mobile-device/ http://youilabs.com/ottawa-startup-brings-iphone-like-ui-to-any-mobile-device/#comments Thu, 15 Dec 2011 20:37:44 +0000 Jason http://youilabs.com/?p=527 itbusiness.ca covers the fast growing Ottawa Wireless Cluster and highlights the progress of YOUiLabs and its uSwish product for top brand comapnies.

http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/Home/News.asp?id=65354&PageMem=2

Inwindow Outdoor is a revolutionary company, leading innovation in digital signage. Known for taking over entire storefronts to create immersive, interactive branded experiences, Inwindow Outdoor is looking to innovate on next generation digital signage hardware.

Their vision was to create a platform that ties together all the cutting edge technology found in consumer electronics. The result is a new kind of device – a device dedicated to delivering incredible branded experiences in a public setting.

To execute on their vision and ensure the product designs could be realized without compromise, Inwindow Outdoor choose YOUi Labs and their NUI (Natural User Interface) platform to power the Experience Station. The platform was built from the ground up to address the requirements of today’s next generation, natural user interfaces supporting all modern inputs such as multi-touch, motion gesture capture and voice commands.

The YOUi Labs NUI platform and integrated Adobe After Effects workflow enabled a collaborative UX development environment that bridged the gap between designer and developer and significantly reduced time to market.

The Experience Station combines stunning industrial design with a 70 inch multi-touch screen, Microsoft’s Kinect hardware, NFC hardware, Intel’s Audience Impression Metrics Suite and Intel’s newest, most powerful processors.

This project employed a truly unique approach for the combined use of multi-touch and touch-less gestures in a completely public setting. Currently a pilot project, the Experience Station is a glimpse at the future of advertising where immersive, personalized experiences will be everywhere.

Techcrunch product video review

OTTAWA, Nov. 15, 2011 – Adobe announced last week that it will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations. In response, YOUi Labs, developer and marketer of Natural User Interface (NUI) technology and services, today announced that, in its view, Adobe After Effects will replace Flash as the NUI-creating tool of choice when paired with the uSwish user interface framework.

Implementing UI design without compromise has long been a challenge for application developers. The final product that goes to market is rarely as the designer envisioned it. Trying to communicate the subtleties of a designer’s vision – through gestures, animation and three-dimensional moving parts – is a significant challenge for UI developers because they’ve traditionally been limited by the abilities of the application-development platform. Flash provided an acceptable development environment, but applications built in this environment fell down on execution because the supporting platform was unable to perform.

Adobe After Effects is an industry-standard application designed for animation and compositing for motion graphics and visual effects. YOUi Labs’ UI framework uSwish brings next-generation 2D and 3D experience to consumer devices. uSwish reduces time to market and provides competitive advantage to consumer electronics and cellular phone companies. When paired with the uSwish UI framework, After Effects becomes the ideal environment for designing an NUI. Designers can work without constraints, confident that every aspect will make its way into the final product. The gap between designer and developer is finally bridged.

“The ability for designs to go from concept in Adobe After Effects directly into a mobile UI is a game changer for our customers and design partners,” said Jason Flick, CEO of YOUi Labs. “We believe we are the only UI platform capable of this integration as a result of our team re-thinking the entire approach to NUIs and how they are architected.”

The pairing of After Effects and uSwish allows designers to get the result they want. After Effects avoids inaccuracies and trial and error during implementation, ultimately reducing project costs.
For more information on UI design without compromise using uSwish and After Effects, view YOUi Labs demo on YouTube or view the presentation recently given at UXCamp Ottawa by YOUi Labs’ VP of research and development, Andrew Emmons.

Adobe After Effects UI design and development presentation

About YOUi Labs
At YOUi Labs, our focus is on offering services and next-generation technology that enable consumer electronics manufacturers to differentiate themselves. The YOUi Labs platform provides industry-leading graphics performance while significantly reducing time to market. We bring together the experience and people from leading gaming, GUI development, and mobile service companies who have led in their space for over seven years. Together, there are over 500 million devices running software developed by our team. For more information, visit www.youilabs.com

Andrew Emmons, YOUi Labs’ VP – Engineering, will be discussing Implementing UI Design without Compromise. This talk will highlight some of the key challenges in communicating a natural user interface or NUI to developers.  NUI’s are not defined by button color, size or placement but rather by the feel of the interaction.  Today, a key media for defining a NUIs is video. Adobe After Effects is a great tool to create such videos to specify the exact movement of user interfaces through transitions and animation.   We will explore using not only the final video but the actual information used by Adobe to remove the development guess work to recreate the exact look and feel envisioned by the designer.

Jason Flick, CEO of YOUi Labs, says “building a compelling UI in this post iphone era is very challenging and we are happy to share our successes and lessons learned.”

If you are a User Experience (UX) Practitioner, Designer, Entrepreneur or a Specialist in a related field, this is the place to be to learn and share with the ultimate goal of creating better products and user experiences for everyone.

Update:  For those of you who were unable to attend the event, here is the link to Andrew’s presentation, which was very well received.

http://prezi.com/5cpj-eheexan/implementing-ui-design-without-compromise/