The Navigable Information Environment (NIE) system was developed originally as a visualization system for large web sites. Files were read into Processing and two-dimensional graphics were rendered based on the tree structures found on a given server. The addition of a tangible interface allowed more degrees-of-freedom when viewing the information, leading to the expansion of the system into a 3D-browsing system detecting hand-gestures and manipulating the 3D-environment accordingly. The same method described in the Hardware Hack Lab was used, but employing a wireless-RF keyboard as a base for development. The keys were mapped to buttons placed under the fingers of the user. The green fabric is detected with the Myron Processing Library and mapped to an on-screen widget which appears when a gesture is detected by a keypress.

This is an example of an interface utilizing two methods of hardware hacking and repurposing to acheive a desired set of input data. This is okay. Obtaining digital (keypresses) and analog (position-sensing) data is often seperated because of the technical hurdles in obtaining analog data from the real-world.