A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design • Hacker News Board

Re: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

#151

Post by icandoitbetter » Wed, Nov 09, 2011, 8:57 PM UTC

anjc wrote: post #31

joebadmo wrote: post #7

This was similar to my own reaction [0], that these concept videos don't look far enough forward. And, maybe because I'm just a born contrarian, as the world moves toward touch-based direct-manipulation paradigms, I've personally been moving toward a more tactile, indirect paradigm. I recently bought a mechanical-switch keyboard, for example, that I'm growing more and more fond of every day. I've also started looking…

"""these concept videos don't look far enough forward.""" If you look at any 'visions of the future' from the last 150 years, their visions retrospectively look silly and naive. From a forward looking perspective, though, would a true vision of the future make sense to a person seeing it? Maybe a clunky 'TV + rotary telephone' 60's vision of videophones would be more understandable/realistic/visionary than the sight…

Did you even read the essay? Visions of the future are critical in shaping the focus of today's research. GUIs, laptops, etc. came almost entirely out of Alan Kay's mind. Visions of the future that just plain suck, such as Microsoft's, then become misguiding.

Re: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

#152

Post by isnotchicago » Wed, Nov 09, 2011, 11:38 PM UTC

aphyr wrote: post #24

joebadmo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insightful. It seems to me that the touchscreen, because of the reconfigurability you point out, is the lowest common denominator of input. It makes a lot of sense for a highly portable device, because you can pack many configurations into a small device. I guess what I lament is the richness or input resolution you give up. And if general computing trends more toward this lowest common denominator, we're faced with…

You're absolutely right: it is a spatial resolution problem. There are only so many distinct targets for a finger on a given surface. Part of the reason we're seeing so many finger-oriented glass interfaces is because it lets us sweep the resolution issue under the rug: capacitative sensing just isn't that good yet. However, I expect that in the next twenty years we'll be able to offer affordable glass with both disp…

And the texture problem is being worked on: http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/26506/

Re: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

#153

Post by isnotchicago » Wed, Nov 09, 2011, 11:43 PM UTC

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…

Amen. Buttons are a hack: http://globalmoxie.com/jhc/prez/buttons-hack-w2e.pdf

Re: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

#154

Post by prawn » Wed, Nov 09, 2011, 11:50 PM UTC

mattiask wrote: post #101

prawn wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true. What tactile feedback could a hackysack-size ball really give though besides perceived firmness? If the finger rings were actually more like thimbles, could they impart some texture onto a finger tip? If you were brushing over a virtual surface, could they then give a sensation of texture? Raised on a page to denote a button, etc? I really liked the OP's article, but found it frustrating stopping short o…

Well, the ball could in theory feel how much pressure you excert on it and where, and provide haptic feedback. In a super advanced scenarion perhaps the ball could provide feedback by varying it's firmness. Guess it depends on how advanced technology is how good the thimble solution could be, but it strikes me easier to manipulate a ball, which you could do even when it's in a suit pocket than to do gestures in the a…

Instead of thimbles, implants beneath the skin within fingers?

Re: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

#155

Post by kisielk » Thu, Nov 10, 2011, 12:26 AM UTC

aphyr wrote: post #147

kisielk wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny you should mention MIDI keyboards. Many musicians are now seriously using iPads to play music. For a good example check out ProjectRnL on YouTube. They use a bunch of apps, some developed by Jordan Rudess (keyboard virtuoso and keyboardist for the band Dream Theater) that let you play things you can't easily play with a conventional keyboard. He managed to replicate a lot the features of the Continuum Fingerboa…

I think the tactile response is important. I see the ipad falling at the extreme end of the response spectrum: glass, unweighted cheap keyboards, weighted keyboards, cheap piano, Steinway. Reconfigurability is important, but I suspect that expressive performance is improved by that interplay of position and resistance.

It depends what you are doing, if you just need a keyboard then I think your ordering makes perfect sense. However, for an expressive instrument to be used as a sound synthesizer, I would definitely put it well above any inexpensive keyboard controller. The cheap controllers don't offer anything good in terms of tactile response anyhow, and suffer from expressive limitations. Take a look at some YouTube videos of GeoSynth or MorphWiz on the iPad for some examples.

If the iPad also had tactile response it would surely be even better, but even now it surpasses most offerings.

Re: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

#156

Post by sedachv » Thu, Nov 10, 2011, 8:49 PM UTC

inkaudio wrote: post #42

aphyr wrote: post #13

The article focuses on "everyday object" manipulation, but he's right about technology too: there are a wealth of common HCI tools that glass cannot accommodate. - The textual keyboard remains one of the fastest methods of text entry. It can be used without looking, offers high bandwidth, affords both serial and chorded inputs, and works well for precise navigation in discrete spaces, like text, spreadsheets, sets of…

And one more thing, voice control. Apple has a knack for refining old ideas and making it mainstream. Voice controlled computing has been available for years. Perhaps in the future many of the computer interactions for the non techie consumer will accomplished without using their fingers, swiping.

The first voice-control app shipped out in the early 80s for industrial inspection use, along with a wearable computer. I don't have the specific reference handy.