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Tangible Interfaces for Computers
Jesrad writes "A friend pointed me to this impressive demonstration of the SenseTable by James Patten, of the Tangible Media Group project of the MIT. This project aims at conceiving better human-machine interfaces by using the concept of physical objects that the user can manipulate, to represent abstract computer data and commands. The device looks and works a lot like what was envisioned in Minority Report, it uses pressure to track blocks on a sensitive surface, and feeds back to the user by superimposing graphical data. Want to change the volume of your MP3 player? Just put a block on it and turn like you would a radio knob. Menus and commands are accessed by moving a block along command hierarchy, represented in a simple tree, or by touching the command's name. So far it only lacks a device for text input, like a keyboard, but maybe voice recognition will replace it?"
... just press the button to type the specific character?
One could even have different keyboard layouts being switchable with a knob... oh, wonder, wonder!
Feel free to add other irony below...
So why can't you just put a volume knob on that MP3 player?
Now we just have to convince the guys who make these to associate with the Tangible Media people. Minority Report indeed.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
SCOTTY: Computer....Computer? (Technician hands SCOTTY the mouse. SCOTTY uses it as a microphone) Hello, computer.
TECHNICIAN: Just use the keyboard!
SCOTTY: The keyboard? How quaint!
"Where's the any key?"
You'll have to reply with "Well where did you leave it last?"
Paul Lenhart writes words!
"So far it only lacks a device for text input, like a keyboard, but maybe voice recognition will replace it?"
Or maybe they'll just plug a keyboard into it? Voice recognition may well have its uses, especially as an accessibility technology, but as a general input device it's really a pretty poor idea.
Unless we're all supposed to sit in a cone of silence or something.
KFG
While various varieties of tangible interfaces might be useful in specific circumstances, the typical user doesn't want more crap on their desk. They want a flat, easily positioned, brillant screen (or three). They want a keyboard (which could be virtual, but most people prefer some tactile feedback for typing). They want something for pointing (which could be a glove, a mouse, entirely virtual, ...) They don't want a metaphor that looks like Play-School.
So far it only lacks a device for text input, like a keyboard, but maybe voice recognition will replace it?
I talk to my computer enough as it is. The day that it actually listens to me is that day that I'll have to rebuild it every other week, and red will be the day when it starts talking back to me.
A concept like this one has already been explored at MIT with the Audiopad (Google Cache), used to make music but really could be used as a new, innovative kind of interface.
What I'm waiting for is for someone to combine that Linux HD of the PS2 and the EyeToy into a Minority Report type interface.
...than this movement-sensitive plastic block I have on my desk right now. It actually responds to the physical movements of my hand and includes pressure-sensitive areas that allow me to interact with virtual desktop metaphors. I can actually move this device over the virtual mp3 player on my desktop and apply pressure to one of the sensitive areas to change to volume.
It won't work.
The typewriter interface has been with us for over a century. We've become accustomed to it.
I remember watching Minority Report and thinking "people don't like computers now. Do you think they'll be willing to learn such an obviously unintuitive and totally new interface?"
This seemed like it would be especially true outside the tech sector, such as, for instance, in law enforcement.
Remember that the only intuitive interface is the nipple. Everything else is learned. Some people may use this, yes, but I doubt most. I don't think most can deal with anything beyond using the mouse and keyboard.
Otherwise, the following things would be used, since they're faster even though they have a higher learning curve:
-mouse gestures would be HUGELY in use
-keyboard shortcuts would be known by almost everyone
-everyone would be using vi or emacs in a wysiwsg mode instead of wordpad/notepad/word.
-User interfaces with only a single type of action (clicky-clicky) wouldn't be popular.
When and if this is ever true of most of society, then we'll be ready for the new interfaces.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
I hate this whole movement. Using computers should become EASIER. Who wants tired arms from searching on the computer or back pain from moving files? I'd prefer to do this stuff with a click of a mouse button.
I think "loseable" would be a better one.. I can't even find the remote control for my TV most of the time (and I have 3 RCs); it would be a BAD idea to have all sorts of controls that do different things and contain state information.. Can you imagine losing the volume knob?
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Even when the technology is perfected to Star Trek standards i.e. you don't even need to think about articulating to make yourself understood by the computer, keyboards will remain the preferred input method of many, including me, simply because it's the fastest. I haven't ever "learned" to type but I average around 100 WPM and peak at 120, without a DVORAK keyboard. I'll rather use that to jolt down an idea, write a letter, program or post at Slashdot than voice recognition.
This work reminds me of the work that Douglas Englebart was doing in the 1960s. And while I think this new interface work is great and needed I also believe that the biggest impediment to adopting new methods are cultural ones. While you could (and should) say that the delay in adoption of Englebart's ideas (windowing systems, a mouse for input) was the technical challenge of bringing these methods to home computing mahcines, you can't forget that cultural forces were also at work slowing down people's acceptance of the GUI.
But a more dramatic example of the slowness of cultural change is the fact that I am typing this on a QWERTY keyboard. Dvorak has been around for years but still we type on devices that show their Victorian age heritage. Even when there is no need at all for the random shuffling of the alphabet across the current keyboard in the way we use it!
Another fine example is the red-headed stepchild of the Englebart revolution; the BAT keyboard. The BAT is supposedly easier to learn to use (I've never tried it myself) than a regular keyoard and is also supposedly more ergonomic than a keyboard, as well. It is aslo easier on the joints (or so they say). Now it's mostly sold for people who have Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and other injuries/disabilities. But it was originally thought to be a better method for input for everyone (injured/disabled or not) to use.
Englebart was right about most things (which were later refined by others into the form in which we now recognize them), but the BAT just never caught on. Too different, probably, from what people had already been using for over a century.
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
I can understand why some people are appalled by tangible interface concepts. These are the same people that refered to GUIs as WIMPs (Windows, Icons, Menus, and Pointers). For some people, a command line, keyboard-coded interface just works. But it is not the best interface for everyone or every application.
1) Media creation: Who still creates CAD drawings with a keyboard only? I used some early versions of Autocad that where keyboard-only -- they sucked. Sometimes a tangible pointer with a 1-to-1 interface mapping between a 2-D surface and the screen is superior. For artists, the use of an LCD graphics pad and pressure-sensitive stylus means much higher productivity and finer control. (I've even scene academic research suggesting that a two-mouse interface could improve productivity.)
2) Mapping to the Realworld: Go aboard an aircraft carrier and look at how they keep track of flight-deck operations. A miniature replica of the flight deck and miniature aircraft provide an intuitive 1-to-1 mapping between the model and the real-world. I'd bet that they could improve flight deck operations if those little aircraft moved automatically to reflect actual locations and if manual movements of aircraft spawned automatic commands to flight deck personel.
3) Multiuser interfaces: the demos of MIT's system that I have seen (a business-oriented supply chain visualization tool) leverage the table interface for multi-user applications. With the table, anyone around it can reach over and move a block. And everyone can easily see who moved the block.
The power of tangible interfaces is that they can help create a more literal mapping between a digital artifact and the real-world. Sometimes less abstraction leads to better ease-of-use.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I'm certainly not the first poster to comment on this, but I just don't understand why many assume voice input would be the preferred method? That it'd even be better than physical controls (be that keyboard, mouse, switches, joystick, whatever). There's enough aural noise in the environment, even without more; accidental commands, specificity, technical things... And except for niches where it does make sense (if one can not use his/her hands or even legs), there just doesn't seem to be much beyond 'coolness factor'? Just like you can get carpal tunnel syndrome, your throat can go sore etc.; there are no health benefits; people can generally point/click/type faster than talk; GUIs are multi-dimensional (2 currently), speech generally single-dimensional, so there's one less way to distinguish what was the target (ie. no location information)... and so on and on.
Now as to Star Trek and other sci-fi movies (including Minority Report), isn't it fairly obvious why voice input was/is used? It's the easy way to indicate what a character is inputting, and what are the results! Even if it wasn't for futuristic touch, it's so much better for needs of movies and tv series than, say, keyboard input (keyboard and mouse are only shown when realism is needed). Directors are in general experienced and smart professionals, and know that voice input is a very good solution for THEIR problems. Just like even though there hasn't been the need to stay on call for tracing to work for decades now, they still always imply it is, in crime series, just because that's a cheap (albeit unrealistic) trick to add some suspense to plot. Just don't assume they are prophets that show what future will be; just what works for them.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
At a glance, this sounds very much like the underlying interface stuff behind the Audiopad project (also from MIT, IIRC) - smart pucks moved around a projected image on the sensing surface. There were a few pucks which controlled various musical loops and one which acted as the microphone (the closer a loop was to the mic puck, the louder it played).
Not that I'm doing anything down - my guess is they're now making more general use of the stuff they'd developed for Audiopad, or Audiopad was just the first application they'd come up with, or something along those lines. Nice to see the technology back again actually, I've got a video of Audiopad and it's pretty cool.
This is perfect for Dyslexics!
And I should know, I am one.
For Dyslexics and people who have never used a computer before, a command line only interface is a MASSIVE hurdle. A GUI speeds up the time it takes a dyslexic to learn about computers by a factor of 10. A tactile user interface would IMHO speed up the learning (and normal human/computer interactions) by a factor of 1000.
For example I cannot spell, yet I'm asked to write the User Docs for my firms computer systems all the time. If I were in the land of Typewriters, I would probably not even have a job, let alone be asked to write for other people. So the GUI did for my computer interest, the same thing computers with spell check did to my Employability.
As a dyslexic, a TUI (Tactile User Interface) matched with a good 2D or 3D GUI is the Holy Grail.
In fact, a TUI would turn a 3D user interface into use full human/computer interaction method.
The Human brain is designed to work in a 3D space with tactile feedback. Anything else requires the brain to waste resources on "translator system" in order to use things like command line only interfaces. And for Dyslexics, everything is mucked up in "translation".
If computers had been command line only when I was in school, I would not have been interested in them and would not be doing what I am doing right now: Sitting in the office on Saturday night (I'm in London) Posting on Slashdot instead of ironing out the kinks these new computers that my firm just bought.
Wait...maybe GUI's are bad J:)
It's definitely very cool to move the text cursor around, directly linked to the movement of your left index + middle finger (seemingly), and to be able to cut/paste by "picking" text with thumb + index and then "dropping" it :)
Definitely an interesting piece of technology. I can recommend that keyboard, it's worth a try for any geek.
Btw, this was already featured twice: /. story 1, /. story 2.
John Underkoffler is a former member of the Tangible Media Group, and was the science advisor on the film.
Just look what they did to emacs :-O
Seriously, while this probably has niche applications (previous posters have mentioned a few that sound plausible) I don't see that it offers much to the conventional desktop user (a keyboard and mouse require much less movement than the shenanigans Tom Cruise got up to in the movie and, other than keeping office workers fit, these interfaces will just lower productivity).
So what about wearable computers? Something you wear on your belt with a head-mounted display, designed to be used while walking along? Well, to me it doesn't make much sense in this context either: again, if you end up requiring much odd movement on the user's part it won't work. In my opinion the future is far more likely to look like a next-generation of Canon's eye-controlled (pupil-tracking) autofocus system to control a pointer on some head-mounted display coupled with (in the short term) an interface that minimizes the need for text input together with some kind of finger-based character input device[0] or (longer term) speech recognition of a standard where the software doesn't need training and can cope with background noise[1].
[0] There was one mentioned on slashdot ages ago that looked a bit like a gripmaster (key for each finger plus the thumb), and text was typed by entering chords.
[1] Incidentally, how much research has been done on using stereo input to speech recognition programs to reduce background noise? I would have thought that would help quite a lot, albeit at the expense of CPU time.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.