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A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

worrydream.com

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Re: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

#41

Post by kitsune_ »

patricklynch wrote: post #37
chadlundgren wrote: post #30

This post would make a lot stronger case if it didn't use an eye-bleeding, small gray font.

What are you talking about? The basic text -- 12 px Arial? -- is pretty standard. I'm sure I'm not the only person who read it without issue. But what's more -- unlike most things I read online -- this essay even has text that's much bigger!, darker!, blue-er!, and illustration-y! where appropriate. That's perhaps the most snide, trollish, unimportant pot shot I've ever seen here. Don't blame the author because your…

It's a web font, PT Sans, it ends up being smaller than Arial or Helvetica because of the awkward smoothing.

Re: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

#42

Post by inkaudio »

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.

Re: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

#43

Post by dools »

sukuriant wrote: post #35
zach wrote: post #10

When you rescale the human body in proportion to how much of the brain is concerned with each part, you end up with this: http://www.jwz.org/blog/2004/12/sensory-homunculus/ The hands are huge because so much of your brain is devoted to skillfully moving and precisely sensing things with your hands. Your hands are basically the focus of the human body in interacting with the environment around it. This explains how m…

You're going to want to add an NSFW to that link. I glanced at it while on my work computer and was not pleased to find male parts on the 3d model.

Haha maybe not safe for work if your computer screen is being projected on the front wall of a kindergarten

Re: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

#44

Post by RyLuke »

The OP is rehashing the concepts around pervasive or ubiquitous computing: the notion that computing will expand out to meet us in tangible products, as opposed to being solely accessed on dedicated computing devices.

There's been much more than "a smattering" of work in this area. Lots of really smart industrial designers and engineers have been working on these ideas for quite some time. I personally based my Industrial Design degree thesis around these concepts almost 12 years ago. Hiroshi Ishii’s Tangible Media Group at the MIT Media Lab comes to mind. The Ambient Devices Orb was a well-covered, if early and underdeveloped, attempt to bring a consumer pervasive computing device to market.

These products are here today and will continue to emerge. A recent example would be the thermostat from Nest Labs, a device that beautifully marries the industrial design of Henry Dreyfuss’ Honeywell round thermostat with a digital display, the tangible and intangible interfaces working seamlessly in concert.

Re: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

#45

Post by nchuhoai »

icebraining wrote: post #15
nchuhoai wrote: post #3

Excellent Post. More of that please. I think some sort of HUD in glasses will be the future. Doesnt take up much space (presumably) and allows for rich gesture interaction (like whats already possible with Kinect)

Kinect is an excellent example of what the author thinks it's wrong with the vision. It provides absolutely no sensory feedback.

I dont think the author thinks kinect is wrong. What he criticizes is that a touch interface we you physically touch something needs to supply tactile feedback.

Kinect however is IMO not bound to the same scrutiny for tactile feedback. If you take the Kinect Sports games, you can pretty much see yourself in the game in 3d, making it really intuitive and very natural to move to the game.

I agree though, the menu navigation in Kinect is horrible.

Re: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

#46

Post by losvedir »

Man, Bret Victor seems to have some of the most consistently interesting and inspiring articles I've seen.

I suppose he's just pointing out one area of the future to think about, but I wish he'd mentioned other ideas. I think voice and language, in particular, have some of the most room to grow to make interfaces more intuitive.

edit to add: Along this line, I've often wondered if it'd be worth learning Lojban to interact with the computer more easily. Supposedly the language is perfectly regular and well suited to that sort of thing, but I don't know for sure.

It could be easier to teach humans Lojban than computers English (or however many other languages).

Re: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

#47

Post by nchuhoai »

Volpe wrote: post #39

I think I disagree with the rant. It's a little inconsistant as well. On the one hand, he argues that Pictures behind glass isn't where we should be heading, and instead we should come up with better visions, as an example he uses the someone who came up with the original idea for a "goddamn ipad"... But wait, didn't he just say pictures behind glass was a bad model to work towards? Personally I think if we could imp…

I dont really get your point.

He was an UX engineer at Apple. He probably was involved with the "goddamn ipad". He is not critizicing the Interface Method perse, since it is probably the best we can do right now given the size constraints and technological capabilities we have right now.

What he says however is that the long run, pictures behind the glass cannot be the solution. Or better said: shouldnt be.

Re: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

#48

Post by spatulon »

nchuhoai wrote: post #3

Excellent Post. More of that please. I think some sort of HUD in glasses will be the future. Doesnt take up much space (presumably) and allows for rich gesture interaction (like whats already possible with Kinect)

Bret Victor has a longer essay from 2006 on user interface design, called "Magic Ink." It's similarly insightful and interesting.

http://worrydream.com/#!/MagicInk

I've submitted a HN story for it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3213535

Re: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

#49

Post by macrael »

Volpe wrote: post #39

I think I disagree with the rant. It's a little inconsistant as well. On the one hand, he argues that Pictures behind glass isn't where we should be heading, and instead we should come up with better visions, as an example he uses the someone who came up with the original idea for a "goddamn ipad"... But wait, didn't he just say pictures behind glass was a bad model to work towards? Personally I think if we could imp…

You are taking that first bit out of context. H is pretty clear in the article what he means. He believes that pictures behind glass are a transitionary phase and not something we should work toward, because we already have them. The Dynabook was a vision of the iPad but it was a vision someone had 40 years ago. His point is that Alan Kay's vision truly was visionary in that he saw a future interface that did not come to pass for decades, but that Microsoft's vision here is not truly visionary because it basically shows you where we are today.

Re: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

#50

Post by psychotik »

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…

The Kinect is a great example of using the most expressive form of interaction we have - our entire body. It's the right idea. The latest updates even do facial recognition (identify muscle movement). Too bad it doesn't scale to smaller devices/cramped objects. I wonder how small kinect-like tech has to get before it makes its way into smart phones, etc.

However, I think voice might be a more expressive medium there, even better than touch. Imagine being able to detect sarcasm, inflection, accent, etc!

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