"Below we present some of the outstanding recent developments in the field of user experience design. Most techniques may seem very futuristic, but they are reality. And in fact, they are extremely impressive. Keep in mind: they can become ubiquitous over the next years." More here.
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Member since:2005-07-01
Arms are what humans were made for. We climbed trees and hit each other with bones. UIs aren't currently designed with these sort of actions in mind. It's repetitive, subtle actions like typing, or clicking a mouse button, that do the damage (AFAIK, I'm no doctor or anything...).
I want to be able to browse the web just by dragging my fist across the desk, and occasionally thumping or kicking it. When I need to type, I should be able to talk instead. I should be able to stand up and wander round, still using the computer by talking and waving my arms about.
There's still a vast amount of work to be done within the UI field. You're right - a computer should know what you're thinking. The computer should study my behavior and start making educated guesses about what I want to do next. That's the sort of thing that doesn't need fancy new input or output devices. It's the kind of work that should be happening right now, somewhere in the alternative OS world.
The thing about these new interfaces is, they won't gradually replace mice and keyboards. Instead, they'll be research toys for ages until suddenly, they're ready for use and obviously much better than mice/keyboards, at which point they'll take over as fast as TFT monitors took over from CRTs.
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2006-02-02
People have been talking about voice input/output since the 1980's, but it just doesn't catch on. Why? Because so far, no one has come up with an *easier* interface than Ye Olde Keyboarde and Mouse.
I could browse my desktop, navigate the web, open applications, all via voice command in 1996 (OS/2 Warp 4.0), but I could do all of those same things much, much faster with a keyboard and/or mouse. I also didn't have to worry about my boss shouting "Format c:!" (didn't work, but was funny).
Voice dictation is nice if you have a corner office, but if you're in a cube farm, or writing a document while someone in the room is reading, voice dictation sucks. I also tend to type faster than I talk, since I don't get held up by punctuation when typing (Paging Victor Borge!).
As for touch-screen and surface interfaces, they look cool, and for some applications (iPhone/iPod), they're very useful. For a general purpose computer interface, you wind up in a situation where you now need the keyboard and gestures, instead of a keyboard and mouse-- You're still breaking the rhythm between data input and UI control.
One option might be something like Surface to replace a keyboard+mouse combo, but now you've gone from good tactile feedback (mechanical keyboards) to lousy feedback (membrane keyboards) to *no* tactile feedback.
If, however, you're still using a physical keyboard, then the touch-screen is probably much farther away from the keyboard than the mouse currently is (see complaint about leaving "data entry" mode to go into "user interface" mode, and double it).
Member since:
2005-07-05
All these new interfaces look pretty cool and all, but as somebody with nerve damage from repetitive computer use, I don't know how practical any of them are in the long term.
A great interface would just know what I was thinking so I wouldn't have to move my arms anymore.