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Spatial Interfaces

johnpalmer.site

11–20 of 29 posts

Re: Spatial Interfaces

#11
post #9

Oi. I’m guessing the author is young and doesn’t know that much work was put into spatial UI in the 80s/90s and flopped for good reason: we might live in a 3D world, but that doesn’t mean computers should emulate that... the world doesn’t change dynamically in front of me like with a computer. Turns out that computers are hard and complicated, and simplifying their interaction works best. That and most of these probl…

I really think the Xanadu interface is a ideal way to browse information. It's not full 3d but allows simultaneous viewing of related documents and how's their relations. Not as clumsy as a million tabs buit with a tiling approach it can be decent. [1] I'm working on a version made with Markdown, GitFS and Go, but it's barely functional [2]

That being said there were some full 3d prototypes early on that were atrocious.

[1] http://tetramor.ph/wormwood/view.cgi?url=static/doc/doc.xan....

[2] https://github.com/germ/xanadown

Re: Spatial Interfaces

#12
Thx very much!! You just puts words on my theorical researches upon making new kind of interaction in our constraint SaaS admin world (from now on Bootcamp CSS like UX is the believed limit).

From my point on view, using classical old school RPG-game type interface will be one of the possible next move ;)

Re: Spatial Interfaces

#13
post #9

Oi. I’m guessing the author is young and doesn’t know that much work was put into spatial UI in the 80s/90s and flopped for good reason: we might live in a 3D world, but that doesn’t mean computers should emulate that... the world doesn’t change dynamically in front of me like with a computer. Turns out that computers are hard and complicated, and simplifying their interaction works best. That and most of these probl…

This where you are wrog and didn't read the author proposition. In the article the presented Sococo products is in 2D, and if you refers at actual usage, like slack, you stay in a 1D (list) of users, so form me (rare) products like sococo are goind in the good direction by adding 1D. 3D is perharps one too far goal, but in the mean time we should explore 2D as much as we can and radically change the ay e make web app, instead of trying to (pale) copy the (master) slack.

Re: Spatial Interfaces

#14
post #10

Skeuomorphism can be horrible. Just give a glance at what Microsoft attempted a couple of years ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5teG6ou8mWU Why should we have to emulate real world interactions, the whole idea of computing is to make tasks easier, less of a cognitive burden, not replicate them in a virtual world. Sure there are specific kinds of software that are in need of a more humane approach but I'm not sure…

I hate to be pedantic but 1995 is more than a "couple of years ago".

;) ;) ;)

Re: Spatial Interfaces

#15
post #7
post #3

> I could place my personal site on a street near the websites of my friends. We could form a little village. Wasn’t this the thought behind the addressing of pages on GeoCities?

There is NeoCities now, but it lacks the village aspect. https://neocities.org/

I hope it to be the next move in the industry, transforming text webpage into 2D RPG-like interface.

Perhaps that is why webassembly as been create for, to leap forward helping the emerge of new ( 2.5D) interface.

If not, then A13 iphone 11 will only help the mega bytes of poor dev reactjs interface sur-comsumming giga watt of power for no reason, and brutalism will then succeed ;) ;)

Re: Spatial Interfaces

#16
post #9

Oi. I’m guessing the author is young and doesn’t know that much work was put into spatial UI in the 80s/90s and flopped for good reason: we might live in a 3D world, but that doesn’t mean computers should emulate that... the world doesn’t change dynamically in front of me like with a computer. Turns out that computers are hard and complicated, and simplifying their interaction works best. That and most of these probl…

There's new ways today to interact with digital media than in the 80's and 90's, and it's a little short-sighted to say "some smart people tried it a while ago so leave it alone."

Deep learning was a cool but impractical idea in the 80's and 90's. In-browser payments were laughed out of the room when Netscape and Microsoft tried proposing them to banks and credit card firms in the 90's.

Part of what the author is saying is that, maybe with our current toolset, we can find that the "simpler" interactions are more physical and interactive now than tapping and clicking.

Sometimes people actually are asking questions like "Who has meetings right now? Which rooms can I bump people from? Did half my group go somewhere that I should be joining?" and a list in Outlook doesn't always fit the bill. Sometimes I need to know where activity is in a building, and just giving me a list of zones or spaces in the building is indeed simpler, but less contextual than, for example, seeing a map with avatars.

There's something good about making what's old new again. It does happen that things we've decided are out of reach or impractical have a novel solution waiting in current capabilities.

Re: Spatial Interfaces

#17
post #8

>It seems that the only way to build an app that replicates the full functionality a deck of cards is to build a 3D simulation or game. Model the cards in 3D and put them on a 3D table. As long as you have controls for reaching out and picking up the cards, and moving them in space, you can do anything you can do in real life. Unless you also want to enable castle building, no, I think a 3D interface would only add u…

[deleted]

Re: Spatial Interfaces

#19
post #4
post #2

we're working on a 3d avatar-based communication platform at mozilla called Hubs (hubs.mozilla.com) that is predicated on the idea that shared spatial awareness and use of media in a shared space will be a common utility in the future, especially in VR + AR.

This is super neat! Thanks for the heads up :) there seems to be a bug where mic audio isn’t transmitted on mobile (iPhone X Safari, iOS 12.4)? Other than that works shockingly smoothly on mobile. Nice work.

Ah thanks! That's a bummer to hear. We've had to do a number of things to work around weird issues with Safari iOS's WebRTC implementation. I thought we had these issued licked -- I just tested on my device which is actually same as yours with no issues. Would you mind stepping me through a reproduction case if it's easy? Also, were you using any kind of audio peripherals on either side? Thanks for the feedback!

Re: Spatial Interfaces

#20
The Sococo example is bang on. I used it for a contract way back and the spatial interface is extremely useful. Teams colocate virtually, dedicated meeting rooms, etc.

The problem is the software is _so bad_. Someone like Zoom needs to buy this and fix the software.

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