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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.
As an Anthro-American, it's high time we had better access to them new-fangled corm-puters. I bought an Apple Macintosh, took it home, and all it did was sit there looking snide.
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
What if you gave your computer the finger would it get upset and crash :-)
I've following Project Oxygen for a couple of years, I seem to remember an article in Scientific American about it some time back.
Anyway, despite the big dollars spent at MIT on it, I'll probably see it on the next generation cell phone from Nokia or Ericsson. Some of the ideas are pretty cool, I can't wait.
In other words, I believe that as lot of fundamental research will happen here (I live in the US for the moment), but that engineering and delivery will be elsewhere.
The idea that all machine interfaces can be simplified to the point where they are intuitive enough for any untrained human to use seems questionable to me. The problem is, computers as tools allow abstract tasks to be performed that were not even possible before they existed. They aid humans not only in performing such tasks, but present ways of thinking about tasks that was not possible before. This may or may not have any equivalent at the level of hand gestures or speech. The machines may force us to adapt to some degree, but I would like to point out that at this time humans are vastly more adaptable than even the most sophisticated information technology.
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, What if the interface "thinks" that you're going to attempt to load one program, when in reality...
The ONE new feature I would like best on my computer is for it to know what I mean when I say "Stop! No! I didn't mean that!"
The common human can manage the 1 1/2 foot distance of a keyboard fairly well as evidenced by the number of God awful personal web pages on Geocities. Even though I use the most "gooey" Graphical User Interface, Apple's Mac OS X, if I want to manage data, files, etc., I jump to the "Terminal" and do it through the Command Line Interface. Even with Mac OS X's speech control and IBM's Via Voice software, I can still type faster than I can talk -- in an intelligible manner.
I always find it funny in "near future" films how complicated the input interfaces are. They are dancing their hands in a virtual space acting like data had a form that you could grab and move. What a waste of effort. If you have to flail your arms around for 8 hours, you are going to be exhausted...but at least you will only have to buy one ticket to fly Southwest. The amount of effort required to manipulate the 100+ keys of a standard QWERTY keyboard is minimal. Though I have never had problems, I am sure the keyboard design can be improved to prevent repetitive injuries to certain users. We are all different shapes and sizes in various regions of our anatomy. Its hard to pick the "average human being" for a generic device.
The keyboard is a powerful input device. Even with the 130 year-old QWERTY keyboard, human kind has been able to create wonders -- without it, we would have never made it to the moon. Compared to the original 1872 keyboard layout by C. L. Sholes, my clear plastic keyboard that came with my Dual G4 is not much different. I know it so well, I don't think I will ever use the Dvorak keyboard but my future kids might.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
if you think about, the whole reason humans are in the position they are in is our ability to adapt to things NOT 'human centric'.
by the same token you could argue that we have developed in such way, so well suited for our environment, that EVERYTHING is 'human centric'.
the fact that we can pick up a stick and use it for a tool, does that make us more adaptable or does it make a stick more 'human centric'?
given that we can interact fairly well with just about anything, how are they deciding what actions/motions are more native to humans?
they didn't answer this either, from the project site it seemed that most of the 'improvements' focused on voice commands and having the computer do menial tasks for you, meaning less interaction, not easier interaction.
Or is that MIT page just an overblown dramatic way of saying, "Hey! We're doing usability testing!"
Somebody once said that the only intuitive interface was the nipple. Everything after that had to be learned.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I've been able to know about the next windows BUI (Body User Interface), directly from their ultra secret research labs!
First of all, the next windows version will not recognise keyboards, mice, touchpads etc., as they're obsolete devices, that the new generation of win-users should gladly forget.
Of course, a virtual keyboard will be included for compatibility issues, only it will be hidden, so that the average user will never be able to find it.
The hardware device used in this interface will be a full set of position sensor that the user should put on his body, each of them connected to the computer via his own wire; user will have to stand in front of a huge monitor and move all of his body to send commands.
The software interface will be an unlimited 3d space, of course, with an avatar of each user connected to the system ad well as small 3d "icons" of each program available: users will have to grab the icon to launch the program, or to kick them to see an alternate menu (right click-like) or to hit them with the head to select them for other reasons.
Common windows commands will have their shortcuts, with a triple somersault being "shutdown", scratching your armpit being "close" and of course what on some unices is called three fingers salute will be achieved with one (the) finger only, and will allow you to log in, to log out, to check for unstable programs, to shutdown, etc. etc.
Resistance is futile. :)