Shoogle sloshes onto phones

Boffins at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, have come up with a novel way for mobile phone users to interact with their phone.
The Shoogle interface [apparently named after a Scots-English word for shake, although the dictionary reckons it’s more likely to be ‘shoggle’], uses a “vibrotactile display and realistic impact sonification” to tell users what’s ‘inside’ their phone.

With the interface tapping into a phone’s accelerometers, a user can tell how much battery life is left by shaking the device and listening to how much liquid is sloshing around inside. Alternatively, they could see how many unread emails or text messages they have by listening to the number of steel balls rattling around inside. These demo sounds could be replaced with pretty much anything.

John Williamson, inventor of the interface and research assistant at the Department of Computing Science, University of Glasgow, has a page on Shoogle here.