Sans Hands │ Perform Uninterrupted on iOS and MacOS

Outline

Sans Hands is a gestural interface that enables uninterrupted, seamless control using mixed reality technology. Read & browse effortlessly from a distance using your hand, voice commands or face gestures.

Supported Documents: PDFs

Learn more about thestory behind Sans Hands

In April 2020, Blanca Azcarraga and Jacqueline Bowler invited our founder over for a lovely evening of music, food and wine. Jackie, who teaches music as adjunct faculty at NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, is an extraordinarily talented pianist that was performing a soothing piece of Jazz so powerful that it captured the entire room.

Performing on a keyboard that held an iPad to display the music score, Jackie’s flow was fluid and mesmerizing; only to be interrupted every time she needed to turn a page. This periodic cavity within her elegant, serene performance brought up a conversation between Blanca, Jackie and Oscar whom questioned what could allow musicians to perform uninterrupted, using face gestures.

This led delasign to prototype & test before iterating and producing the MVP for Sans Hands which was released on iOS and MacOS App Stores on January 19th 2021.

In September 2020, during Oscar's trip to Croatia, Oscar carried out an in-depth interview (IDI) with Ed Stoner, Founder of New Dynamic, to research the utility of the application into other realms. At this point, Ed mentioned that he would be interested in using it with his hands. That it could allow for a more comfortable reading experience. This led Oscar to develop the second version of Sans Hands that allows user's to interact from a distance using their hand.

The hand control feature was released as part of Sans Hands v2.0 on the Apple App Store on March 28th 2021. A historic achievement as it was first of its kind and demonstrated the potential of a new paradigm of interfaces that can be clicked and dragged using your hand from a distance.

In January 2023, during a conversation with Adam Blumenthal, Adam suggested that musicians would find it too difficult to use face gestures to turn a page and questioned if Oscar had considered Voice Commands - which Adam felt was the most effective, useful and straightforward utility for individuals to turn a page; whether for musical or cooking purposes.

The voice command feature was released as part of Sans Hands v2.2.1 on the Apple App Store on iPhone, iPad and MacOS on February 10th 2023 and using Apple's Speech Recognition framework to allow individuals to turn a page, go back a page or to go to the first slide of document in English and Spanish.