Making Computing More Human-Centered

buzzdecafe writes "Interesting article in InfoWorld about the future of interface technologies, e.g. pointing your finger to move files around, etc. The story focuses on MIT's Project Oxygen, which aims to make computing more anthro-centric. (Check out the Visual Interaction stuff.)" We've written about Project Oxygen before.

Comments

Only for "power lusers"

[shoppa]

While these new user interfaces are great for those who want to further enhance the Point-and-Drool experience, I don't see how they generalize to the degree of expression you get from more traditional command-line interfaces.

I mean, renaming a file to a new directory by pointing your finger is fine if you just want to rename one file. But to suggest that this is an improvement over the command line if you've got thousands of files to shuffle around is completely ignoring the computer's ability to do mind-numbing repetitive jobs quickly and accurately. Instead it's insisting that a human interact at every mind-numbing repetitive step. This is not progress, people!

Re:The QWERTY keyboard is still king!

[PotatoHead]

You are right on with this. I have been working with a design package called FreeForm that uses the new Sensable Technologies Haptic input device.

Being able to feel your model has significant advantages, but there is one subtle downside. You get *tired* quickly. One can run a MCAD or ID design package all day with a mouse and keyboard and not blink an eye. The haptic will leave your arm sore after a few hours.

Personally I feel we have not done near enough with audio input...