Carnegie Mellon Today, Fall 2009
On the flight back from a conference in California, Johnny Lee, a PhD candidate in Human Computer Interaction, and Jason Hong, an HCI professor, are talking about the Nintendo Wii. They both feel that the system has huge potential outside of just video games- Hong is even thinking of designing a class around it, and wants Lee to help. As the plane cruises 30,000 feet over the Midwest, Hong lays down an irresistible challenge: you design an interface, I'll buy a Wii for the office.
Unfortunately for Hong (and the office), Lee has to spend the next few months working on his thesis. But when he finally finishes a few months later, he decides it's time for a fun project. In a few weekends he turns the Wii remote into a simple motion capture device, a digital whiteboard, and a virtual reality headset. Then he posts some videos explaining how to build them on YouTube.
“Any interesting project with the Wii will get some attention,” Lee says, but he had no idea how much. One post became YouTube's number one rated video. The curator of the prestigious TED talks invited him to give a presentation. His devices started popping up everywhere- fourth graders built them for science projects, university professors were using his digital whiteboards in their classrooms, the VR headset was turned into a flight simulator.
Lee, now a researcher at Microsoft, says that by giving away the concepts and making the materials cheap he was able to reach many more people. “Otherwise it would probably be just another failed startup,” he says. Far from a failed startup, Lee was recently named one of the top 35 innovators under the age of 35 by the influential Technology Review, joining past winners like the founders of Google, Paypal, and Netscape.
