Nice implementation of Microsoft Surface Studio had two main innovations at least from external visual perspective. One is the Hinge, which put a focus on a mechanical part, that from TRIZ theory and its laws of system evolution was “screaming” to be a next part to evolve. I put several times this system component at the frontier of next changes. The law is that every system is evolving heterogeneously, so you can take a look at old legacy components to bring a next breakthrough.
Another component that has been added is a Surface Dial. Nice idea to increase the control ability and improve interaction design. While, what MSFT did, is good from margin aspect (addition to a BOM/sales), from system evolution perspective they have added another component to the super-system. It makes new functionalities, but adding complexity. Thinking TRIZ, you can tell that the next phase would be “trimming” by “changing dimension”. For example you can remove this component by determining the touch of 5 fingers altogether to call for the same functionality. Something like this:
To make the interaction design of the feature more convenient I would add the functionality of next action once the “Touch 5” is triggered. It can be a single finger left to rotate the wheel or finger taps to choose the next action.
Makes sense?
Concepton 