Building sophisticated educational tools out of cheap parts, Johnny Lee demos his cool Wii Remote hacks, which turn the $40 video game controller into a digital whiteboard, a touchscreen and a head-mounted 3-D viewer.

To understand Johnny Lee, just take a look at his website. Aside from his Wii Remote hacks — voted the #1 tech demo of all time by Digg — you can see all the other places his mind has turned: typography, photography, urban renewal … to say nothing of his interesting sideline in Little Great Ideas, like the hypnotic “___ will ___ you.”

Since earning his PhD from the the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, he’s joined the team at Microsoft responsible for Project Natal, a controller-free motion sensing device for the Xbox 360.

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• Watch Mark Baskinger’s “Drawing Ideas and Communicating Interaction” talk at Johnny Holland
• Watch Free Flow’s “3D Computer Interface” demo
• Watch Randy Pausch’s “Really achieving your childhood dreams” talk at TED
• “The Design Eco-System”: Bill Buxton’s Keynote at IxDA | Interaction ‘08 Conference
• Look Into the Future with Autodesk Labs: Multi touch wall

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This entry was tagged as 3D software, carnegie mellon university, Demos, educational tools, Game, Gaming Culture, gestural interfaces, Human-computer interaction, Johnny Lee, Microsoft, multi-touch, tangible interfaces, TED conference, Typography, User Experience Design, User Interface, Wii