How’s this for an idea?

Apologies for the lack of updates, I promise to write more. I know I can keep this promise because it’s an effecticve form of procrastination – for instance it’s preventing me as we speak from doin my assignment due tomorrow

Anyway, this is something I was trying to explain to Timmeh the other day (maybe at the Bavarian Bier Cafffffeeeee) but for the life of me had forgotten what my awesome idea was.

While listening to a somewhat entertaining lecture on interaction design the other week by this guy (yes his name really is Bert Bongers, he’s from the Netherlands) he flashed up a comic, in Norwedish or whatever they speak, that had the evolution of men hitting things, progressing from clubbing an animal, through to hitting an anvil and ending at a user hitting his computer. It wasn’t particularly funny, but as he said, in all of the panels leading up to the computer the person was actually acheiving something by hitting.

So I had the idea for something that would do something for you when you hit your computer. Specifically, I have in mind a large red emergency button that you plug in via USB, and when you hit it, it sends a ctrl-alt-del keyboard command to the computer. The button would be housed in a pretty hefty box that you could mount somewhere solid on your desk so you could give it a real beating.

Taking the idea a step further, you could have a second normal recessed button to restart your computer so you don’t have to lean down to press in the fiddly little one on the front of your case, or better yet it could be a switch that requires a key in it, or better still, one that requires two people to turn keys simultaneously. I think I’ve stumbled into an entire set of gimicky USB peripherals based on oversized emergency props taken from action thrillers.

Admittedly there is already this missile launcher but don’t tell me it wouldn’t be a million times cooler if you could launch it with this button:

Just so you know, I’m convinced this would be relatively easy to do – getting the hardware definitely wouldn’t be the hard bit. Watch this space