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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.
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.
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.
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.