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The Next Computer Interface
BoarderPhreak was among the several readers who pointed out "an interesting article on the various alternatives to storing your files using a 'desktop' metaphor" at TechReview.com. "New styles like time-indexing, 3D sphere ala SGI's file manager, and even a 3D virtual 'task gallery' from Microsoft. Screenshots available in the article." All of these have been floating around for a while; hopefully soon some radically different interfaces will actually gain widespread acceptance.
There's a great Slash-based site with loads of articles examining potential next-gen interfaces. Not a huge amount of traffic yet, but the editor seems to be consistently putting up new articles. Check out Nooface.
--LP
The future of interfaces will be controlled by the user. Not all users work best in the same way. Sure you can spend money researching to find the common interface that everyone is average in their productivity, but in the end the productivity is with in the users themselves, and the interface that works best for them. So the future of computers in general is adaptable interfaces.
disclaimer : My views do not represent those of every one else in slashdot.
When it comes to organizing my files/folder/shortcuts, I very rarelu use the Start Menu. Instead, I've been using The Brain, which treats documents, programs, shortcuts, program groups, etc as "thoughts" which you can link to any other thought. Pretty cool.
why don't we replace the usual desktop metaphor by a game metaphor?
Just imagine: To delete a file you don't have to drag it to the trashbin but you can shoot at it. And depending on the type of weapon you are using there is a chance to recover the file if you (of course accidentially) hit the wrong file...
From my point of view a computer was designed to take work away from the user and not to put extra work on him by applying some stupid metaphors. Every metaphor that requires interaction like mouse movement and klicking is wasting the users time because its hard to make it automatically. But that's what the computer should do, doing the jobs automatically. I don't enjoy a copy job that requires me to push and pull a mouse and gives me as a sort of reward a stupid animation of flying papers.
(no, rotating the text so it's always facing me won't work, neither will sarcastically suggesting that people must have all these problems reading papers from a 3d perspective as life has a much higher resolution).
Now give me a ZUI!
When I use 3D interfaces on PCs, I tend to get seasick. A CAVE, with motion tracking and powered by a real computer, is much better in this regard, but motion tracking works only for a single person at a time, and suck caves are still quite expensive. I bet some people get seasick when using them, too.
The main problem with current desktop systems is not the metaphor of a 2D desktop itself, but rather that as computers have become more powerful, and more complicated, we end up with more junk to wade through. It's exactly the same with a "real" desktop too. The more files you pile on your desk, the harder it is to find something. So it would seem that in keeping with the KISS principle, we shouldn't be trying to find a new metaphor, but instead improving our current one.
/home/
One of the main problems today is that the OS doesn't make the best use of the information available to it. The OS can know the file type, the application(s) associated to those files, when the file was created etc. but in general, it doesn't do much with that information. Sure, if you double-click on your file, it can find & launch the application associated to the file type, but you're still left with the problem of finding that file.
My own proposal would be to make better use of the file information that the OS has available to it. Its theory, but basically you place a database layer over the filesystem. We should also make use of MIME types for each file, and create a hierachical directory structure, one for each MIME type inside the users "home" directory. As a simple example, you may have something like:
user1/
files/
image/
jp eg/
pn g/
x- bmp/
audio/
x- mp3/
Now we have this, we can put the information we have to good use. Whenever a file is created, rather than asking the user for a directory and a filename, we ask them for a description of the file. Create the file in whichever directory suits the files MIME type, with a system generated filename, and add an entry for the file into the database which is layered above the FS. The record should include the users long description, type, creation date etc.
Now when the user wants to find & open a file, they can easily find their file by e.g the decription, using a wildcard if they wish. Or the creation date, using a range is they want to. The major advantage is that they don't need to navigate through a heirachical directory structure, nor do they need to remember what type of file their looking for, as the OS can present all of the files that the user can open as a flat list in the dialog.
O.K, it's a clumsy description, but the basic premise is that a) The OS can handle placing the file on the FS instead of forcing the user to decide & b) We know have a flat list of files to manage, instead of a possibly very complex heirachical tree. We do retain the advantages of the hierachical tree for the filesystem, however.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
And yet none of them have taken off. Why's that? Maybe (heretical thought!) it's because the current model actually works quite well for most people.
I don't want a system where the computer organises things for me. I can organise them better myself. (Occasionally I might lose something, but probably less often than if the computer was filing stuff for me. Anyway, we have good 'find' tools on Windows and Unix.)
I don't want a 3-D interface. It's much harder to visualise and navigate than a 2-D one. (A set of 2-D interfaces, as in Mozilla's tabbed browsing or many window managers' virtual desktops, is good. This is perhaps one of the real UI advances in recent years. Windows could do with virtual desktops.)
The article says: "Conceivably, an inference engine can be made so intelligent that [...] machines would automatically present information to you as you need it." Well, maybe when that's true I'll change my mind.
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My point is that these attempts at deciding the future of GUI are pathetic as they don't even take the current GUI's limitation in consideration:
(Note: if you don't agree with the following then you had to adapt yourself to these. Take anybody who doesn't use computers and just observe him.)
Future GUI concepts should take the problem the reverse way:
I am actually working on a GUI concept which will *not* be 3D. This will be Open Sourced.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
"We wanted to find people who didn't understand the function of file folders, how to open files, how to delete files. We couldn't find anyone. That makes it hard to change people's expectations of how computers should behave." - try 3rd world. I know lots of ppl here in Brasil that never saw a computer in their lives and that still fears that a HAL 9000 can someday takeover the world.
But that's not the reason of this post.
the real reason of this post is to say that the solution to the desktop mess may already exist, living right in our POCKETS... yes, I am talking about PalmOS.
Palm os is task oriented. you want to type a text ? fire the text editor. all your texts will be registered as belonging to that app, and will be an inseparable part of it.
Want to draw a picture ? same thing.
The job of organizing files by date, size, content, name, category, etc will be handled by THE APPLICATION, in a way that best matches the type of aplication you're using. Keep in mind that organizing AutoCAD drawings is completelly diferent than organizing texts or bitmap images.
What ? Me, worry ?
The article mentions how annoying Clippy is, but says that MS researchers still think a 'helpful' interface is a good idea if done properly. Can anybody think of a good way to do this without it becoming annoying?
One thing that I really hate about those little characters is that they get in the way and take control of the computer away from me. But what if a little box on the task bar showed the three 'most likely' things you wanted to do and you could activate them (complete with little wizards if the task is complex) by clicking?
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Voice interaction is a classic example of something that can be thought of as "cool" until you have an open plan office with 30 people talking at their computers.
I agree about offices, the technology to make voice interfaces work is here today, but the applications is not, however but Voice Interfaces offers a lot of potential for much more personal environments, like the car home & SOHO.
VI offers a number of advantages over conventional interfaces, biomentric security, easy of use & accessability, even for your technophobic mother/granny.
Imagine a home entertainment gateway accessed by voice, no worries about little Johnny snooping your adult PIN. The inherent Biometric security, will make no difference, if he overhears your PIN.
Imagine re-tuning you IP Radio Alarm, by voice, without opening your eyes.
Imagine switching off your security alarm, by saying 'Hello House', and then following up it up with the query "Messages?" without having to log in and remember your password.
Or change channels without having to figure out which of those six seperate remote you need to use, simply by saying 'TV, select channel 4', or 'TV, News' or any number of other scenarios.
I think the killer application for VI is Home Automation.
However, the file-cabinet view of the desktop have lots of nice alternatives. I really want a system that treats my desktop like a giant mind-map. Every project that I work on, and all the little notes that I find myself writing all the time would fit great in a mindmap structure. Also having the entire map in a zoomable format would be a better way to use the background than just putting the standard Manga/Astronomy/Softcore/Whatever-floats-your-boat pic there.
Furthermore such a desktop would interface nicely with remembrance agents. Imagine having an interactive system (perhaps integrated in emacs, like the one in MIT) that monitors what you write and suggests related nodes, that you have written before.
And it doesn't stop there! If you have a little checkbox for 'public' on each node/note, a mindmap maps well to a html-site (like MindMan does), so you could easily transform a set of loose thoughts on a subject to something that the entire world can benefit from. The RA could perhaps also interface with something like Everything and the mindmap desktop could have an easy function for uploading nodes/groups of nodes to the community. The entire hivemind of such a network would have an enormous potential.
Got interesting incoming mail? Tag it with a few keywords and give it a place in the hierarchy and the RA will pop it up when you need it again. The mindmap structure is immensely powerful. Got a whole slew of files in a programming project? Using the same system as you do for all the rest of your documents, you could easily arrange them so as to get a nice visual overview of their interdependence.
Can you tell that I've been thinking about implementing a desktop (probably in scheme for that schweet scriptability) that does something like this, for a while? ;)
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati
When I write something in a notebook I don't have to "save" it, or give a special name etc.
For example, I've used a wordprocessor, called "YeahWrite", that does away with files. You simply open new pages and write. Everything is automatically saved and you pages are arranged in time order. This works great for people who are not computer expersts and are not interested in learning about computers.
In "The Humane Interface" Jef Raskin describes an interface that's based on plain text. There are no documents, just one big text stream that contains separators. The user interface just manipulates this text.
Finally, do these usibility experts actually watch people work? One of the most useful UI features is the idea of "Virtual Screens" (as implemented by Unix window managers). Each virtual screen keeps the context of a particular task and makes it easy for me to switch between them. Why hasn't this become a standard feature of Windows is beyond me!?
...richie - It is a good day to code.
1) What difference does it make how you represent a heirarchical filesystem and its contents? Zippo. Infact, organizing them by document and folder is probably the most condusive way to go, since most people arent like us. The rest of the world thinks in real world terms. Only programmers are accustomed to thinking about such things in highly abstract terms. Grandma shouldn't need to develop a mental picture of a binary search tree in order to find her cookie recipe. The desktop metaphor is boring in most implementations, yes, but its certainly not dead
2) 3D interfaces are rediculous. Take the screenshot that accompanies the article -- Three desktops are presented to the user in the form of a room, with a screen on each wall. What the hell difference does it make if they're on the walls? Youre STILL USING a flat, two dimensional surface to interact with! And so long as you're still using a flat, two dimensional space to interact with, representing them in 3D is pointless. Workspaces need to follow a design similar to channels on a television. You'll notice that your living room has one TV in it, capable of displaying hundreds of different workspaces. You don't have hundreds of TVs mounted all over your walls, each tuned to a different channel. 3D workspaces may have a future, but as a modus to display was essentially amounts to a 2D workspace floating in a 3D scene, they are beyond pointless. They're ridiculous. As in, its ridiculous to improve the design of UIs by "pulling a CueCat." You're inventing a tool to solve a problem that doesn't exist by pushing "2D in 3D" interfaces.
3) The 2D GUI isnt dead. It just needs refinement and rationality in its design. Speaking of irrational and unrefined ideas, take your common everyday scrollbar. You have a device (a mouse) capable of smoothly vectoring along a curved path, and communicating that movement to the computer. However, your damn UI still wants to alter your view of a workspace or document according to explicit X or Y axes. You can scroll up and down, OR, you can scroll left and right.. But never both, an act which would be far more intuitive to the common user. It takes fine adjustment of two separate widgets (a vertical and horizontal scrollbar) to accomplish a task that could be easilly encompassed within one...while wasting a disproportionately large amount of screen real estate in the process. So, rather than whine about it, I decided to do something about it a few years back.
Scrollbars are dead, and we killed them. Been working with someone for the past week or so on (finally) delivering a proof of concept model for the infamous "scrollball" whitepaper I released 3 years ago after InSight collapsed. The model looks fantastic so far (hi Dibos!) and will probably be dumped on Savannah or Freshmeat in a week or so once we fumigate the code to drive the last of the bugs out.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
Really, all this mucking about with physical gizmos and doodahs is a beside the point. The ultimate user interface will be a device which one wears on one's head, like a hat. It will then insert probes (which are very small, possibly nanosized) into the user's brain. This will be done gently and painlessly. The device will be able to determine what the user wants and execute the wishes directly. Furthermore, the device will also work the other way, sending information INTO the brain, and determining what the user sees, hears and wishes. It will be very kewl B)))