Linked by Nicholas Blachford on Thu 19th Feb 2004 20:06 UTC
No, I'm not going all "New Age" on you, this time I'm looking at how computers are going to get a 3rd dimension and how this will change the way we interact with them. The previous parts of this series have been based on extrapolations or previous history. This time I'm looking further forward, when technologies currently in long term development become available and open up a whole new realm of possibilities.
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Well, the author clearly doesn't recognize the fact that not everybody processes what they see, hear, feel and sense in other ways in the same way. What makes it "obvious" for a 3D user interface? It might be obvious to one user, because they think and interpret the world in that manner, but others do not. For example, in the US they've started migrating to iconic road signs (something I suspect is more common and has existed for a longer time in the rest of the world) and to be perfectly honest, I have a hard time figuring out what they really mean. Why? I'm far from stupid; I just don't visualize their graphic representations to mean the same thing as I'd use to describe what they mean. The same thing applies to many graphic icons in computer programs. That's at least one reason why tooltips were invented!
The same thing is true of the commandline: what works and makes sense for one person is not obvious to another. However, some people process most of what they do in a more verbal manner than visual. This does not make them freaks or uneducated, just different.
What it comes down to is that computers will work best when both types of interfaces are available, both verbal as well as visual in nature.
Of course, besides verbal and visual, there are other senses: let's not neglect those! Why limit ourselves to 3D when other dimensions (sight, sound, touch, pressure, temperature) exist that can communicate information? cheezwog hinted at it with that pressure vest. There are many people that will be even further left out of the use of computers if 3D is the only real interface supported by computers, due to some limitation beyond their control. Not everybody has the equal power of control or sensation that everyone else does, and computers need to acommodate that reality.