A nice update on the idea of improving tactile feedback is this related concept from Microsoft Research, a touch-sensitive mouse. The prototype appears to be pretty far along, although they’ve done only small-scale subjective testing.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Jakob would insist we only need 6 users anyway to test a concept.

It works by measuring natural skin capacitance against the special conducting paint that covers several surfaces on the mouse. Coolest trick: It makes the extraneous toolbars in WinWord fade away when the user’s hand isn’t on the mouse.

Somebody’s got their thinking cap on, eh? I’d set the damn thing to go straight into full-screen mode, myself, but it’s certainly a nice concept.