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A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

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Re: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

#121

Post by feral »

baali wrote: post #90
feral wrote: post #17

I just watched the video, and typed my reactions, as I had them; no idea if this will be of interest. * * * People still travel for meetings? By plane? Wait, someone is driving the car? Thats not very productive. There are bellhops? Why are there still bellhops in the future? What do they do? Why is the screen so small? Why have a screen, if you have those perfect augmented reality glasses? 'Creating reply interface'…

How is driving a car not a productive task? There can be cases when people "want" to drive out of their preferences and passion. Can we actually classify some random and not-so-appealing work to us as non productive?

The guy that picks her up at the airport, appears to be a professional driver. He has a black cap, and he nods deferentially, before turning around to apparently open the door or trunk for her.

I'd have thought that in a 'Productivity Future Video' you'd have the car driven by computer, given that we seem to be on the cusp of that technology, already.

I'd have thought she say to her device that she wanted a car from the airport to her hotel, and it would have done the rest.

This would clearly be more productive, as we wouldn't be wasting the labour of the man who drives the car.

You are right that its possible that he wants to be a driver for people, out of some individual preference, in which case this is essentially a leisure activity for him. But I'd leave people that do unnecessary work, because of a personal preference, out of a 'future productivity video'.

I can't help but wonder if the reason the cars don't drive themselves is because its a Microsoft video, and Google who have gotten a lot of PR out of driverless cars, are a competitor.

Re: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

#123

Post by nchlswu »

pedalpete wrote: post #112
jodrellblank wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't completely miss it - go to settings, general, accessibility, and you can enable voiceover which reads anything you touch out loud and makes you double click to activate, so you can navigate without sight. It's terrible if you want a hardware button to skip a track, but it's usable for basically any iOS app with standard UI controls - including web browsing - which a hardware button isn't. I've never seen…

No the ZuneHD doesn't have buttons for those interactions, and the ability to read out whatever I touch is more of an aid than an true interaction element. My ideal is that we shouldn't always be aiming for items on the screen to interact with. We've traded hardware buttons for software buttons, even though the ability to recognize things like swipe now exist and are much more natural. With a button, I have to hit th…

I was never sold on the idea of swipe becoming pervasive. That being said, I'm not sure if a 'natural feeling' interaction for the sake of convenience is necessarily the best.

The swipe interaction isn't the most intuitive interaction for new users navigating around screens or other digital content and Apple seems to have used it for content that's derived itself from physical content or pages, such as books or images. If Apple were to use swipes as OS wide navigational gestures, it would preclude the use of swipes in app-specific contexts

Re: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

#124

Post by nchlswu »

tsunamifury wrote: post #55
mrshoe wrote: post #51

I can't help but think that the success of the iPhone and iPad has caused a big step back in usability among devices that try to copy them. Two similar examples: Garmin's newer aircraft GPS units have touch screens instead of knobs and buttons. The iPad has proven very popular among pilots. I can see why Garmin would decide that "touch is the future." But, while I'm flying an airplane, for my money I'd rather have kn…

Two counterpoints: 1) "targets" are a part of tactile interfaces, in touch interfaces we may shed the need for accurate targets (i.e. gestures can be made anywhere on a screen) 2) Confidence that comes from the physical response from tactile systems may just be an anachronism after a decade or two of built up trust in touchscreen systems

We may shed the need for accurate targets, but I would imagine there would be atleast a need for feedback that is not demonstrated in the 'vision.' But that leads to your second point.

There's been anecdotal evidence that young children can just figure these interfaces out and I'm wondering if it's true that the confidence may come from learning and built up trust. I'm doubtful that the built up trust can account for 100% of the confidence. Touch based interfaces are largely form-less designs. There are an infinite amount of affordances offered by a touch screen. As it stands now, all of these affordances are defined by the visual appearance and lack the 'resolution' so to speak, that a physical form can provide.

Re: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

#126

Post by nchlswu »

The long standing mantra has been 'form follows function.' This is predicated on a particular product or object having a form (that reflects its purpose) to begin with. As items become increasingly 'form-less'I've always wondered what this means for design. There are a lot more considerations that must be made.

I know it's been mentioned in the documentary 'Objectified,' but has anyone seen any other commentary?

Re: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

#127

Post by [deleted] »

nchlswu wrote: post #123
pedalpete wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No the ZuneHD doesn't have buttons for those interactions, and the ability to read out whatever I touch is more of an aid than an true interaction element. My ideal is that we shouldn't always be aiming for items on the screen to interact with. We've traded hardware buttons for software buttons, even though the ability to recognize things like swipe now exist and are much more natural. With a button, I have to hit th…

I was never sold on the idea of swipe becoming pervasive. That being said, I'm not sure if a 'natural feeling' interaction for the sake of convenience is necessarily the best. The swipe interaction isn't the most intuitive interaction for new users navigating around screens or other digital content and Apple seems to have used it for content that's derived itself from physical content or pages, such as books or image…

[deleted]

Re: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

#128

Post by evlapix »

nchlswu wrote: post #123
pedalpete wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No the ZuneHD doesn't have buttons for those interactions, and the ability to read out whatever I touch is more of an aid than an true interaction element. My ideal is that we shouldn't always be aiming for items on the screen to interact with. We've traded hardware buttons for software buttons, even though the ability to recognize things like swipe now exist and are much more natural. With a button, I have to hit th…

I was never sold on the idea of swipe becoming pervasive. That being said, I'm not sure if a 'natural feeling' interaction for the sake of convenience is necessarily the best. The swipe interaction isn't the most intuitive interaction for new users navigating around screens or other digital content and Apple seems to have used it for content that's derived itself from physical content or pages, such as books or image…

I have a ZuneHD and didn't even realize there was a swipe interface except to switch songs (when playing music).

pedalpete is still right though. If you tap the center of the screen when playing the song, you get an overlay that is separated into quadrants. Tap the top of the screen, volume up. Bottom, volume down. Left, previous track. Right, next track. Center, pause/play. I never look at my screen.

Re: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

#129

Post by raphman »

dirtyaura wrote: post #16

Great post. Has there been any interaction research done on using something like a stress ball as an interaction device for digital environment? In my imagination a ball would have standard accelerometers and gyroscopes, but in addition fine-grained sensing capabilities to sense different kind of grips. It could also provide tactile feedback.

Actually, we (me and a student) have built exactly such a device this year. Did not have time to finish and evaluate it yet, however.

Some papers on grasp interaction with spherical objects: Tango: www.cs.mcgill.ca/~kry/pubs/iser/iser.pdf Graspables: www.media.mit.edu/~vmb/papers/chi09.pdf Grasp Sensing for HCI (my paper, more generic): http://www.medien.ifi.lmu.de/pubdb/publications/pub/wimmer20...

Re: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

#130

Post by jcromartie »

Angostura wrote: post #119
henrikschroder wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A well-made dial is almost always faster and more precise than up-down digital controls. Eight years ago I bought a microwave oven for my apartment that had a digital knob. It's a physical knob hooked to the timer, but since it's digital, it accelerates. Below one minute, each "notch" increases the time with 5 seconds, but as you go higher, each notch adds more and more time to the total until it starts adding 5 mi…

Same here, I spent a long time looking for and failing to find a microwave with a knob. I wanted two knobs - power and time, and a start button. Instead I found myriad devices intent on offering me a plethora of buttons designed to 'defrost a medium size chicken and one potato'. Sigh.

Maybe there's a market for these kinds of appliances?
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