• by Joe Mandese , November 5, 2009

That’s what Dale Herigstad just told a roomful of digital media gurus and artists during his opening keynote at the iDMAa 09 conference in Muncie, Indiana. Hergistad, who’s day job is chief creative officer of WPP’s Schematic, always pushes the digital media envelope when he presents, but this morning he said he’s actually close to introducing a simple hand gesturing interface for controlling content on television screens. Herigstad, you may know, was one of the consultants on Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s “Minority Report,” and he’s the guy who came up with the hand gesturing interface used by Tom Cruise’s character in the film.

“We’re already building for some cable companies something that does this,” Hertistad told the iDMAa attendees during a part of his presentation dealing with various next generation remote control interfaces, including “touch,” “touch gesture” and pure “gesture.”

Herigstad said he’s not a big fan of touch as an interface, because it requires users to come in contact with a screen.

“I’m a big fan of the gesture, where you cannot touch the screen,” he said, alluding to his “Minority Report” concept breakthrough, which “comes out of the future where you can navigate with your hands.”

Herigstad even showed a bit of a prototype of the new hand gesture interface, using CGI of a hand remotely controlling a TV screen by simply waving up, down sideways, etc. It was very cool, and I cannot wait to get my hands on it.

Tom Cruise gesturing from the future in "Minority Report"