The Surface Studio is a top-of-the-line computer from Microsoft, with stunning design, more power than the Illuminati (or Colonel Sanders), and a unique new interface element: a palm-sized dial like the volume knob like a 70s stereo, which joins the standard keyboard and mouse. Microsoft calls it the Dial, and in early reviews of the new computer, it’s the Dial that truly grabbed attention.
You can sit the Dial on your desk, where its grippy base prevents it from sliding around. A push acts as a click, activating a menu, while a spin of the dial shuttles forward and backward in whatever app you’re in. The real power of it comes alive in creative apps, where you can flip through revisions, change the color of a paintbrush on the fly, quickly select your favorite tools, and more.
Beyond that, the Dial is meant to interact with the Studio’s stunning, 4,500 x 3,000 pixel, perfectly calibrated screen. Lift the Dial off your desktop and place it directly on the monitor (which tilts back just like a drafting table), and a customizable menu surrounds it, letting you concentrate on the canvas beneath your hands, rather than fumbling around on your desk.
“Hey, this is something that has a little bit of magic in there.”
“It’s like this magical moment where I have this object, but when I put it on screen, whoa! Something happens,” explains Scott Schenone, a Senior Designer on the Microsoft Surface team and a key part of the team behind the Dial. Following the unveil of the Studio in New York City in late October, I sat down for an exclusive interview with Schenone to learn about the thinking behind the device.
“We had this analogy of a pallet,” he told me. “A painter has this thing in their other hand that they’re always referencing…and I have this jar on my desk with a bunch of pens and little rulers and stuff in it. Everyone has some version of that. What we wanted to do was create a digital equivalent of that, where it’s just the tools that you go to most, or the features that you find yourself using when you’re inking, especially on a large screen.”Some people inherit a restaurant, or family business, or even a sense of humor. Schenone’s family gave him an eye for design. His father is a leading footwear designer at Nike in Portland, Oregon, and his brother is an industrial designer. Scott just turned 29, and thanks to his father, he grew up at a drafting table.
“My dad worked at Nike doing footwear design, and he had this drafting table. When I was a kid I actually sat on his lap and learned how to draw on this huge canvas. And I was like, hey, some gut instincts are coming out here when I see this big screen. That was one of my inspirations.”
Making the Dial
With a vision in place, Schenone and the design team started work. Since the on-screen sensing is integrated into the Microsoft Pen and Touch Chipset, they used prototyped parts from the Surface Pen’s electronics to start early development. The off-screen interaction used simple dials connected via USB and then via Bluetooth.
“We built a couple proof of concept models – really crude. It was, okay, here’s a slider, here’s a wheel, what does it feel like. And we realized that if you add a synthetic dent, a detente, you’d never overshoot,” he said. Read more:
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