While not to start a whole discussion about this, is MSFT vision of the future is one where women do all the work?
Microsoft's Productivity Future Vision
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Re: Microsoft's Productivity Future Vision
#22It seems like most of the things demonstrated are changes to the gloss of interfaces, higher resolution etc... I don't see radical "productivity" improvements - eg. making input significantly easier through BCI. The touch options they show are a scaled versions (larger/more ubiquitous) of what we have now with stylus/touch input and wearables. For example, why is the big drafting table radically better than a tablet…
What struck me was that people were there almost as props. It was as if technology had advanced so much (information gathering and intelligence) that the people were more or less redundant and were 'doing things' just to act out our newfound purpose. Basically all the information was there and people more or less had veto power --yes or no. I know this is just conceptualization, but they may not be that far off. It l…
It looks fun and would appear that people would have lots more free time to do whatever, but for the most part things were done by machines for people.
Is that not the "promise of technology?" That is a world I am trying to create - one where we work not out of necessity but out of passion, so I am fully behind that. I just didn't see anything in that video that blew my mind in that respect.
I would love to see something projected which would reasonably leap us to the (next thing) the way the personal computer did 20 years ago. This MSFT thing falls short of that IMO.
Re: Microsoft's Productivity Future Vision
#23A lot of what is shown is actually collaboration between 'Kat' and 'Lola' in real-time. Being able to input information from any device, view and present it on some other device, and of course also being able to convert any situation into a conference with someone else is really important and a great vision really. All of that is what we actually focus on at Collusion (https://collusionapp.com/) which is free to use at the moment and does a lot of this in a less slick way.
With the introduction of more and more large screen interactive devices, wearables, pen enabled devices and Virtual reality/AR options, we can open up more and more possibilities that are shown in this clip.
Whats more is that augmented reality is shown a lot here which will become more and more prevalent as a way to blend productivity with the world around us, as well as generally making things more human/natural/fluid, which is also very interesting for the near future, though perhaps not the augmentation without a HMD anytime soon.
As high production the video is and unrealistic or embellished some things might be, effortless and instant transition of information through our systems is certainly possible and I think very probable and I'm glad that MS is showing that in it's vision for productivity in the enterprise. Which is what this video is really about. Microsoft, with its connections to so many diverse electronics business's like Intel, Wacom and Samsung it could certainly deliver on many of these concepts into the future given the right software.
Re: Microsoft's Productivity Future Vision
#24This is all great, and really beautiful and well produced.
What worries me, is that even today, with our simple 2D word / excel, people utilize about 10% of the feature in a good day, and it takes me a few google searches to find where microsoft has hidden "insert your favorite lesser known function here" in version X.
New UX (and by new UX I mean things like holographic / hands manipulate augmented reality items on your HUD kind of UX) should not require user training. I watched this movie 2 times and I still don't understand what exactly they are doing (I get the idea, but if I need to answer a test on what apps they are using and what exactly each gesture means / does, you lost me... is she a publisher? a researcher? a biologist? a teacher? what's the connections between all these movies?)
Having all this gesture based / 3D / eye movement / real objects interact with digital ones - this needs to be making life simpler to make use more productive.
The challenge of the real UX designers of the future is how to make all this unbelievable enormous vector of inputs (mobile phones I'm looking at you too, most apps only evolved to a touchpad / touch screen gestures, mostly swiping with single fingers, how many apps really utilize multiple finger actions except zooming? how many really rely on "shake to send undo", it's still not catching on... now add all the new inputs we saw in the videos, and add Microsoft's new holographic vision, people will go to a mental institute just to turn on a word processor)
The more options we will have to do something the more confusing it will be. And yes, even if kids learn it at school, no technology will have high adaptation rates if it much harder than a mouse click or a keyboard type (or a touch screen tap / swipe which are very small gradual and natural evolutions of the mouse, and only the swipe / tap / double tap / pinch to zoom really caught up out of a myriad of other possibilities)
Also the 2D UX in the video, instead of making sense is just beautiful, and so damn confusing, I have no clue what actual ACTIONS these people do, except joining some project together, wasn't sure if it was a biology project, an aquatic one specifically, an education one, or a non profit one. (but perhaps this is just poor editing)
In one sentence - if this is the future, it's beautiful, and so darn confusing. All people with SaaS here know what I'm talking about - getting users to read a red blinking note and press a button that says X will still get users who simply don't get it. no go get them do a 3D gesture that will launch a floating globe hologram without a 2 hour training... that's the real challenge IMHO.
Re: Microsoft's Productivity Future Vision
#25So Microsoft's vision of the future is for us to continue to be touching flat screens well into the future? Pinch to zoom, drag and drop. Those two gestures pretty much dominated their vision. There seems to be a lot of production value in this video, but it doesn't seem thought out. The interfaces just show drag and drop, and then items spouting animated complex information. There also seems to be a hell of a lot mo…
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Re: Microsoft's Productivity Future Vision
#26Remember the gorilla arm. http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/G/gorilla-arm.html
Ah yes, the failure of white boards to catch on.
Re: Microsoft's Productivity Future Vision
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
That video seemed incredibly prescient. A lot of the features in the video are a couple years off from mass adoption, and maybe it's a bit more geared towards the 90s mindset, but there's a current day equivalent to most of the functionality.
Well for whatever reason it certainly didn't help MS in the long run to produce that video. They missed the technology that actually mattered like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad and are still scrambling to catch up to everyone.
Actually we have no idea whether it helped or not. It may have helped a lot, just that there were too many other forces fighting against it. I'd imagine a video like this could serve as something to get the employees talking (even if they bash it).
Re: Microsoft's Productivity Future Vision
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
What struck me was that people were there almost as props. It was as if technology had advanced so much (information gathering and intelligence) that the people were more or less redundant and were 'doing things' just to act out our newfound purpose. Basically all the information was there and people more or less had veto power --yes or no. I know this is just conceptualization, but they may not be that far off. It l…
It looks fun and would appear that people would have lots more free time to do whatever, but for the most part things were done by machines for people. Is that not the "promise of technology?" That is a world I am trying to create - one where we work not out of necessity but out of passion, so I am fully behind that. I just didn't see anything in that video that blew my mind in that respect. I would love to see somet…
Yes, that has always been the promise of technology, to deliver people from tedium. The unanswered question, if people aren't really needed to do 'work' (giving them the free time) where or how do people earn a living?
Moreover, as machines/automation/computers make us more efficient, this hasn't translated into free time individually but rather made people previously employable, unemployable. So the free time that we might think is due us does't come to us, but is diverted to other people up to a point those other people aren't employed and the people who remain employed work just as long as before.
So, i guess the hope is that as people become redundant at work, that there will be a mechanism to compensate people for their lost earning power. Keep in mind, it's not like the world would switch over on a Monday --it would be gradual and that means lots of people falling through the cracks, _if_ a solution was found.
Re: Microsoft's Productivity Future Vision
#29Ever notice how companies like General Motors & Microsoft like to make "concept" stuff like this, while companies like Apple and Tesla don't bother?
Who's actually delivering on great stuff? Companies that talk about it, or those who just clam up and get to work?
Re: Microsoft's Productivity Future Vision
#30So Microsoft's vision of the future is for us to continue to be touching flat screens well into the future? Pinch to zoom, drag and drop. Those two gestures pretty much dominated their vision. There seems to be a lot of production value in this video, but it doesn't seem thought out. The interfaces just show drag and drop, and then items spouting animated complex information. There also seems to be a hell of a lot mo…
As I said in another post, the video pretty much reduces people to a secondary role. It's not so much technology enabling us or aiding us, but more we supplement technology --but only because technology is allowing us to interact.
The good is that people would have a lot of free time (presumably to do good things), the unanswered question, is now that most people are redundant, what do they do to earn a living? Magic? Bureaucracy?