The Wand - A Surfaceless Mouse Concept for VR/AR

4 min readMar 12, 2018

As a dishwasher turned cook, cook turned product designer. I’ve had my fair share of jobs that required heavy usage of my hands and wrists over the years. I don’t think I’ll stop using a computer anytime soon, so I decided to redesign the mouse and hopefully delay the inevitable beast that is carpal tunnel.

The original spark of an idea came to me in a deprivation tank (aka Float tank). I imagined how one could control a VR experience with a controller in a wet environment. It would need to be designed with as little wrist motions as possible, be waterproof, and should work without any extra external trackers.

A couple months later. I found myself leaning back on my chair doing some light computer research (i.e. pinning images on Pinterest.) Which doesn’t require full keyboard and mouse controls. I had my mouse on my leg, and using my jeans as a tracking surface. As you can imagine, this experience wasn’t optimal…. and then it hit me. A 100% frictionless controller should be functional without a surface at all.

A completely surfaceless mouse should have the following design principles to be considered a success:

Be easy to put on/take off
Be comfortable
Be intuitive to use

Form:

The first sketch was inspired by those 90's strap bracelets. A long ruler like object that could be slapped on ones wrist and it would wrap around it. So in this case, if you smacked your hand onto the object, the wings would snap around your hand.

But after making a prototype with tin foil. I realized that a closed loop wasn’t necessary. But a clip on design fit perfectly between the thumb and index finger which felt much more natural. The wand would also have a bit of tension on closing itself shut, so it would hug your hand enough to stay on when slid on.

Easily wearable. The clip like design would naturally want to close itself and hug your hand.

Navigation:

Originally I thought the wand should wrap around the wrist. But moving your entire arm to move a mouse around a screen seems like overkill.

To move the mouse around, a gyroscope and accelerometer inside the wand will detect the slightest change in motion and translate it to moving the cursors X/Y coordinates.

Clicking:

Using electromyography, which detects electric currents generated by muscle cells, the wand would respond to the slightest finger gestures and translate them to clicks. For example: tapping of an index finger to the thumb could be a left click.

For scrolling, I’m imagining holding your ring finger and thumb together would trigger a panning state, which allows you to raise or lower your hand to scroll up or down.

Gesture mapping:
- Index finger + thumb tap = Left click
- Middle finger + thumb tap = Right click
- Ring finger + thumb tap = Hold for scrolling
- Pinky finger + thumb tap = Customizable menu wheel, where you could easily select from a dozen controls. Think like a weapon swapping menu in video games.