It may look like a regular piano, but the Seaboard Grand is so much more, offering a big clue to what hi-tech user interface devices of the future may look like. 

The Seaboard has a slick dark silicone skin instead of a piano's usual ivory finish. In the place of piano keys aligned symmetrically, it has parts that undulate and ripple across its surface.

Like Us on Facebook

Touching the Seaboard is so data-rich, the inventor Roland Lamb says it changes the unbelievably old and inefficient ways we link our brains to computers.

As far as user interface is concerned, Lamb says human hands are expressive, powerful tools and as long as we are using tablets and computers, we are trapped in the paper-and-typewriter desktop metaphor.

Besides swiping, tapping and pinching mobile tablets, the human could do so much more hand gestures that feed computers, said Lamb.

When the inventor conceived of the Seaboard, he was not sure it would take off.

He thought that when a piano key is struck, the user can add gesture to create more data. As a student at London's Royal College of Arts, he found out that there is software and enough materials to build it.

He fitted the rubber top layer with a string of sensors that have been meticulously engineered to detect hold time and pressure. The sensors are linked to the sound engine, so each note can be manipulated in so many ways that regular piano keys can't.

The Seaboard been a hit: prominent composer Hans Zimmer has taken to it while Indian musician A.R. Rahman used it to play at a Dubai Sufi festival. The gadget allows for all the history and depth of an acoustic instrument, complete with the instantaneous versatility that electronic musicians require.

Rrecently, the MoMA Design Store included the Seaboard Grand in its latest collection, at a cost of $3,500.