Back in October 2012, MIT’s Sloan School of Management selected Leap Motion as their case study company. These entrepreneurial students committed to following and evaluating Leap Motion over the course of their academic year, and I’ve just returned from their final presentations. It was an amazing trip, and I wanted to take this opportunity to thank MIT for their hard work and insights about Leap Motion.

It’s a very cool honor for us at Leap Motion to be selected as a case study project by one of the finest technology schools in the world. Recent companies MIT selected have included Lytro and Groupon. We have been more than happy to endorse the effort by Professor Scott Stern and his assistants and answer their questions over the past year.

The MIT folks met with Leap Motion in various settings (at the Leap Bunker in San Francisco, during our SxSW visit to Austin, and on MIT’s campus) to track our progress and better understand our product, people, passion and overall go-to-market strategies. The culmination of this academic year of effort was the Leap Motion case study and final exam last week. The students assessed Leap Motion in all phases of the business and made strategy recommendations. 

I headed to Boston (also my home town) for their presentations. Over the past year working with these smart students, I’ve learned they can be tough. So as I entered the hallowed ground of MIT to face the class on the last day of the school year, I prepared myself for some hard questions and criticisms.

The sessions were very interactive, with the students questioning our IP strategy, developer plan, go-to-market roll-out and marketing moves. They then posed their own suggestions for Leap Motion to consider – giving us a lot of food for thought. We really appreciate the analysis, input and advice from these great minds.  

Overall, the students really appreciated the genuine message Leap Motion has conveyed, and the accessibility of the $79.99 price point. Their presentations echoed our key focus of nurturing the developer community, and they loved our significant investment to send 10,000 free devices to developers: the “core engine” of Leap’s potential success.  

A lot of folks had wished we started with tablets and smartphones (we’ve heard many questions from our community about future moves into those platforms, and they’re on the road map). But overall the students understood the distribution strategy of our decision to partner with global PC manufacturers, like HP, where Leap Motion can make an immediate impact on brand perception and sales for the industry. It also allows for easier consumer adoption, as the Leap Motion Controller works with existing devices to augment the current input options available.

Their research couldn’t fully encompass Leap Motion without having Leap Motion Controllers, so we provided the class with devices and access to our SDK. Students spent months developing on the platform and relayed their experiences building apps for Leap Motion and leveraging our SDK. Their insights offered lots of learnings that I’ve taken back to co-founder David Holz, the crew in engineering and Avi and Kiwi in Developer Community Relations.

Overall, the students couldn’t wait for us to launch (me too). They were eager to see browsing (check out the Windows video we shared on Monday) and explore the diversity of apps that will be in Airspace when we launch. They also expressed lots of interest to see CAD, music creation and gaming apps in Airspace.  I think they will be pleased when we ship in July, and I hope they – and you – will share your thoughts about the apps and the user experience.

Overall, it was a blast!  My thanks again to the MIT students and Professor Stern for all the time and thoughtful analysis they put into the Leap Motion case study. Hopefully we will look back at your work in a few years through the lens of a successful company, and see what predicted victories and missteps actually came to fruition. Best of luck and congratulations to the Class of 2013.

And to recent grads and other talented people, we’re always looking for great new hires so check out our job listings: https://www.leapmotion.com/careers

Today we released a sneak peek of Leap Motion’s Windows functionality, one of the essential features we’re refining for our July 22 launch. This video shows how Leap Motion technology will work easily and seamlessly with Windows OS. 

From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you’ll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that’s possible with multi-touch inputs — without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we’ll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X.

With the help of the developer community in our beta program, we’ll continue to refine this OS interaction as well as the innovative apps in Airspace. This program is in place to make sure the Leap Motion experience is what we’ve planned all along: to be the most intuitive, natural, and magical way to interact with your computer and to transform how the world interacts with technology. 

If you haven’t already, you can subscribe to our mailing list for updates and news as we continue on our journey together.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve heard lots of questions from people about how they can be part of our beta testing. We’d like to begin by saying that we’re very thankful for the tremendous interest and support that our community has shown. We know you’re eagerly anticipating our July 22 ship date, and we can’t wait to bring the Leap Motion Controller to the world.

Adam Somers, a passionate musician, has been working on amazing Leap Motion applications for many months. His AirHarp and AirBeats instrument apps have been covered by Engadget, Dvice, CNET Australia, Hackaday and more.  We spoke with Adam back in February (see video), and today we have an update on what he’s been doing lately.

This weekend Adam will be at the Bay Area Maker Faire to talk about his work with Leap Motion’s technology. If you’re heading to the faire on Sunday, check out Adam’s session: 

• What: A New Way to Make Music with Natural 3D Motion
• When: 2:30 – 3 pm PT, Sunday, May 19
• Stage: Make:Live  stage, in the Expo Hall (map)
• Where: San Mateo Event Center (1346 Saratoga Drive, San Mateo, 94403)
• Tickets: http://makerfaire2013.eventbrite.com/

5 Questions with Adam Somers, Developer of AirHarp and AirBeats

1. What are you looking forward to most about Maker Faire this weekend?

Maker Faire always hosts amazing and unexpected wonders from the DIY community.  I’m looking forward to seeing what all the unsung mad scientists have been up to this year, as well as seeing some familiar faces.

2. You’re talking about a new way to make music - what are the key points to your session? 

I will be discussing how the Leap Motion Controller allows for natural and expressive control of music and sound.  There are many electronic input devices out there, each with its own set of limitations and barriers to entry.  These limitations will be discussed along with how they can be overcome with Leap-enabled software.  And, of course, I will demo AirHarp and AirBeats.

3. Why are you so excited to work on applications for Leap Motion?

Leap Motion is bringing us closer than ever to having natural control over our computers.  Along with this paradigm shift will come an entirely new category of applications, and I’m doing what I can to help define just what the future of computing will look like.  What could be more exciting that that?

4. What’s new since we last caught up with you in the developer profile video?

Since then I’ve been hard at work on AirHarp and a brand new application called AirBeats—a virtual drum machine that lets you make beats in the air.  Engadget caught up with me at a recent event for a sneak preview, which you can see at http://engt.co/ZVBPpV.  Attendees of Maker Faire this Sunday will get to see a new and improved preview of AirBeats.

5. How do you envision AirHarp and AirBeats being used when Leap Motion ships?

 These applications have been designed with ease-of-use in mind, so anybody will be able to play beats and melodies and have a great time without any prior music training.  For the more experienced producer, you can absolutely use these apps to create a wide variety of music.  With AirBeats, you can record professional sounding beats in a variety of musical styles, from HipHop to Trance to Dubstep, and you can export your creations for use in music production software.  With AirHarp, you can tune the instrument to the scale of your choosing or play a chord progression and sing along.

Over the past year, we’ve had a great time working with awesome people at Google on a variety of uses for the Leap Motion technology. On April 22, the Google Earth team announced support for Leap Motion (video here), which is now available to anyone (right now, our early access developers) that has a Leap Motion Controller plus the desktop version of Google Earth.

We’re excited to see the #LeapInto Google Earth experiences from our developer community, and now Google has asked us to share the fun with attendees during Google I/O May 15-17 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

More than 5,500 developers and influencers from around the world come to the annual conference to discuss building applications in the cloud with Google and open web technologies. We look forward to meeting up with people at the following Leap Motion demo locations:

Google Maps Showcase

• When: May 15-16, 8 am – 6 pm, May 17 8 am – 4 pm
• Where: Google Maps area (2^nd floor)
• What: #LeapInto Google Earth with a hands-on experience to navigate through Google Earth with the Leap Motion Controller. More info here. 

Google Chrome Developer Sandbox

• When: May 17, 8 am – 4 pm PT
• Where:  Google Chrome area
• What:  Check out HTML5 web applications built for Leap Motion, and learn more about developing for the web and our 3-D motion control technology.

Our team heading to Google I/O includes (from left) Isaac, Adam, Avi and Elizabeth. Look for them in their Leap Motion t-shirts.

To get in touch with us or schedule a specific time to visit at Google I/O, please email developers@leapmotion.com. 

By Kyle Hay

The magic of Leap Motion comes in the software, but the hardware that delivers our technology has been in development for 2 years.

I joined Leap Motion (then a company called Ocuspec) in August, 2011 as an industrial designer — and employee #6. Co-founders David and Michael could have given an outside agency specs and had them come back with a product, but instead they approached the hardware design collaboratively.

Here we are, 2 years later. We’ve produced 600,000 devices and they’re heading to warehouses around the world. I wanted to share some of the steps and design decisions we went through to create the final Leap Motion Controller.

In the Summer of 2011, we figured out how to harness Leap Motion’s technology and squeeze it into a box that could rest in the palm of your hand. Before that, Michael and David used to spend about 30 minutes setting up various components for demonstrations. The first prototype – the big white box – was actually constructed with a few hand cut pieces of plastic and some super glue.

In September 2011, we laser-cut some acrylic and assembled it into a sleek and “mysterious” black box. The sharp corners gave it a more unconventional and raw look to the device.

Two months later – after many conversations about making the Leap Motion Controller feel more inviting and harmonious with current consumer electronic products – the ‘infinity shape’ gave us our first vision of what would become the final design. The black plastic enclosure still lent an air of mystery, and we even flirted with device names like “enigma.”

As we priced materials, we determined a clear anodized aluminum shell would increase the quality, durability and presence of the controller.

By April 2012 we were manufacturing – by hand – a small batch of developer units that were used during demonstrations. At the same time, we worked on shrinking the PCB board and overall height of the camera lenses. We finally found a manufacturer who would agree to bring our final product to life. We worked with their engineering team to define the Leap Motion Controller’s final dimensions: 3 inches long, 1 inch wide and 1⁄2 inch thick.

We designed the lime green indicator light as a subtle color accent and focal point, giving life to the product. A black rubber pad on the bottom not only gave grip and stability to the device, but was used as symmetrical design cue to the black high gloss top surface. We put a lot of focus on the fit, finish and build quality, working on over 10 iterations with the manufacturer to fine-tune the final consumer product.

With such a minimal aesthetic, it was incredibly important to polish every detail to really make the design sing.

Kyle Hay has been Leap Motion’s industrial designer since August 2011.

Today we held a live Ustream with our co-founders, Michael and David. Hundreds of our community members attended, but many more could not make it. Below the break is a full (lengthy) transcript of the 30-minute conversation.

For quick reference, a summary of the questions David and Michael answered:

1. You have 600,000 devices sitting around. Are you dumping these or is this a software issue?

2. How about giving people an option? Magic = wait until July, non-magic = send it sooner.

3. How do I become a beta tester?

4. How much does HP or ASUS affect this decision? 

5. How will you address market traction loss from this delay, Kinect 2 and others that are coming soon?

6. You’ve already changed your dates before, how do you know you won’t delay again?

7. I still want to see an official video showing off Windows 8 support.

8. Why won’t you let developers purchase a device now and access the SDK?

9. But even a long beta test won’t bring you a 100% product. Just release it for Kickstarter and skip the stores and the public.  (note, we are not a Kickstarter)

10. What will happen next year after you go in to HP? Will you go into mobile next?

11. Do you have a date for releasing the beta test for developers? More details please.

12. Can you please allow access to cloud points in SDK?

13. Would it be better to order from Amazon UK or Leap directly?

14. As a customer not a developer, how can I be part of the beta testing? You said a small number of people would be able to. 

15. How many apps do you predict will be available at the time of the new launch date?

16. Are you planning on building a bluetooth device at a later date?

17. Will it work with a multiple monitor setup? 

18. How are you going to reward early pre-order customers?

19. Is the delay coming from pressure from HP or other partners? 

20. Why did you wait so long to tell us about the delay?

21. How does this impact the big deals with Best Buy and HP? 

Read More

I wanted to reach out to update you on the status of our ship date. After a lot of consideration, we’ve decided to push back the date and will now be shipping units to pre-order customers on July 22nd.

This is not a decision we take lightly. There are hundreds of thousands of people in over 150 countries who have pre-ordered Leap Motion controllers, some as long as a year ago. These people are part of our community and there is nothing more important to us than getting them devices as quickly as possible.

We’ve made a lot of progress. When we first started taking orders back in May we were twelve (very tired) people in a basement. Now we are eighty (although still tired and possibly still in a basement). We’ve manufactured over six hundred thousand devices and delivered twelve thousand to amazing developers who are building applications that let people do things that just wouldn’t have been possible before.

These developers have given us great feedback that we’ve used to make huge improvements to the stability and polish of the product. We’re really proud of Leap Motion as both a company and a product.

The reality is we very likely could have hit the original ship date. But it wouldn’t have left time for comprehensive testing. This will come in the form of a beta test that will start in June. We will give the 12k developers who currently have Leap Motion controllers access to the feature complete product including OS interaction (today developers only have access to the SDK). We will also invite some people who are not developers to join the beta test.

Ultimately, the only way we felt 100% confident we could deliver a truly magical product that would do justice to this new form of interaction, was to push the date so we would have more time for a larger, more diverse beta test.

I really appreciate your patience. I know it’s been a long wait. Everyone at Leap Motion is working tirelessly to make sure that the wait is worth it. Thanks so much for your help and support.

David and I will be participating in an open video Q&A using Google Hangout tomorrow at 11:30am Pacific time. To join our hangout, please visit our Google+ page. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact our support team at support@leapmotion.com or my personal email (buckwald@leapmotion.com). As always, we will not charge pre-order customers’ credit cards until the devices have actually shipped.

Thanks again.

Michael Buckwald