We've all stared slack-jawed at the amazing stuff Johnny Chung Lee can make the Wiimote do, from Minority Report-style interfaces to a virtual whiteboard. Now ActionTrip has interviewed the man behind the fingertips.
Is anyone surprised that he is a graduate student in the field of human-computer interaction? It certainly explains a lot, like why he can do what he can do and we ... can't. He said that the ideas for his various interface tweaks were all generated during one furiously creative plane trip: "I decided to sit down and hammer out as many concepts that I think could potentially be done using the components within the Wii remote. The key was to think just about the components and not as a whole device."
While he obviously has affection for video games, Lee doesn't have any particular desire to parlay his Wiimote wizardry into a career making games. He says that "I like doing interaction research and only some of my work is relevant to gaming," but we know that he just doesn't want to embarrass Nintendo too much by outclassing them.
Wiimote genius Johnny Chung Lee interviewed
Posted Jan 28th 2008 6:00PM by JC Fletcher
Filed under: Interviews, Controller
Tags: johnny-lee, wiimote
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1-28-2008 @ 6:34PM
racecar said...
This guy is my new hero.
-racecar
http://everybodyvotes.blogspot.com
Reply
1-28-2008 @ 7:33PM
Metayoshi said...
Let me guess... Informatics Major.
Reply
1-28-2008 @ 7:40PM
Metayoshi said...
Dang it... He's an Electrical and Computer Engineering major and a grad student in human computer interaction... At my college, they call it Informatics. I hope I'm able to do what he can by the time I graduate with this Computer Engineering degree, though I highly doubt it.
1-29-2008 @ 2:16AM
KidSqueej said...
toys r us website used to say that the guitar was gonna be released 1/28/08 but then changed it late last week to 2/26/08
Reply
1-29-2008 @ 7:33AM
Billy T said...
If Johnny Lee just happens to read this...
Keep up the fantastic work and document everything you can so we may enjoy it.
Reply