Slashdot Mirror
Tactile the Future of GUI?
aaronvegh writes "Slashdot readers have been griping a lot lately about the lack of an alternative to the desktop GUI. In his latest Alertbox column, Jakob Nielson (love him or hate him) is proposing that tactile, phsyical interfaces will be the next evolution in how we interact with machines. An interesting read, and a relief from the tired "the desktop GUI is dead, and we'll replace it with....uh....""
I've been using my Logitech iFeel mouse, which has tactile feedback, for over a year now. I like it a lot; it's reassuring that widgets in windows are "bumpy". I guess it's like moving to a real keyboard after having used a membrane keyboard. It even works in some games, most notably Black & White which actually had missions that would only appear with a force-feedback mouse.
But unfortunately, iFeel mice have been available for a long time now, but it doesn't seem like they're catching on. People don't seem to want to spend even the extra $20 or so for the feature.
Your eyes have millions of receptors. When you see something like a screen, most of them are actively processing the screen. That is HUGE bandwidth. You are used to using it because your brain is processing vision constantly, so is very accurate.
A tactile interface would rely on a few hundred receptors on a handful of fingers. (pun intended) Unless you read braile, your fingers aren't that sensitive. Your fingers aren't used to being used as a primary interface, and is therefore not that accurate.
Aural (sound) interfaces are much better because they have a significant bandwidth (not as high as vision, but better than touch) and we are used to using them. That's part of why the two most-required output interfaces are a monitor and speakers.
Input interfaces are the same. The best way we have for output is our tongue (seriously), second is our hands. So our two preferred input interfaces should logially be voice and hand. We are used to typing, and always dream of the ultimate speech-control interface. Or you could go to a tongue interface, but I wouldn't want my co-developers to share it.
So as far as User Interfaces go, I think we should strive for better GUIs that can be augmented with sound and tactile feedback.
Just some thoughts.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
The difference between a CLI and a GUI are, really, baggage from a prior generation of systems that should be discarded.
A future interface will be graphical because that allows for more immediate and intuitive use of information. I can know, at a fraction of a glance, that I have Groupwise, Mozilla, and Winamp loaded as "user applications," as well as a working iFolder, netshield, & a couple of other background apps.
The biggest improvement for this will be keyboard integration. I want to push a button (windows key or equivalent) and have a "command area" pop up, which is designed to work with the GUI.
Take the Windows setup and add anything & everything that the Linux CLIs have that it doesn't. Then rework the entire thing from the ground up, remembering that the CLI will work *always* with the GUI, and a user should be able to do everything with the CLI.
A generation after this, and we can replace the command area with voice recognition. The voice subsystem will just feed commands into where the CLI goes, and it'll work exactly as we imagined it would as kids.