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What Will The Future Desktop Interface Look Like?
b O b 1 9 19 A writes "The TechZone has an interesting article wondering where computer interfaces are going. They discuss some alternatives to the traditional desktop, and propose a framework in which future interface designs may be evaluated. From the article: 'The next 10 years will be a transitional phase for interface design. 3D rendering technologies already have a stable home in the entertainment, video game, simulation, and design sectors. Although 2D interfaces have dominated everything else, I expect we will start seeing more 3D incursions. Operating systems and applications are beginning to capitalize on what 3D has to offer. The precise nature of how and where 3D can best be incorporated is an open question, and a framework to evaluate these questions seems appropriate.'" Big-time ad alert. Set your ad and flashblockers to stun.
device that lets you move onscreen objects by just thinking about it. We can do a brain-controled 2-d cursor easily now, better stuff will be on the way soon.
This looks cool.
By then the average desktop will be powerful enough to handle this smoothly. 3D Desktop. http://desk3d.sourceforge.net/
Males tend to be better at spatial memory, while females tend to be better at verbal and communication skills... the 2D interface has been male-centric up till now. Maybe the next step is to take a shot at a female-centric interface. Not that anyone on /. would know where to start, of course :)
How about an interface that is basically 2D, but instead of drilling down, you drill forward? Imagine tracing code in an IDE, and instead of a procedure call just jumping to the other location, your view moves forward through the old routine's code into the new. If you want to see where you came from for context, just back up a little.
A desktop system with easy-to-program (read: the average consumer can do it) widgets and interfaces. Probably with some nice web services integration. People who just need to read email and surf the web only need a couple widgets, maybe a mail checker or something. People who work in offices and do really repetitive tasks have ways of easing that through the widgets (again, very easy to program/setup widgets!).
I think anything that allows people to really use their computer the way they want would be great. I'm not saying it doesn't already exist, but I mean something where nearly everyone becomes accustomed to using a computer as a configurable tool. Something where all those times people say, "Well, I just want it to do [this]!!", they can easily set it up to do whatever it is.
Just my thoughts.
Everything I need to know about copyrights I learned from Slashdot.
It is sad that anyone has the vision of people still sitting in front of displays ten years from now. My prescription, switch to glasses with very high resolution across the full field of view but the ability to be transparent too, give the computer multiple cameras placed strategically around the room so that it has a full 3D view, integrate head position detection and a point of view camera into the glasses also, and then create an interface where the computer places virtual objects in your environment in a natural fashion. i.e. Let's read virtual books on our real desk, see the images of people we're talking too remotely as if they are sitting in a chair in our office, have virtual office decorations, have a virtual whiteboard that we can stand in front of and interact with (just a blank space on the wall that the glasses allow us to see as a whiteboard for a while), etc. i.e. augmented reality should be our 10 year vision.
The reason why 3D interfaces aren't really that useful is that you really need a 3D input device to make use of it. But the trouble is, the way our bodies are built, it's very tiring to wave our hands around all day long.
You don't wave your hands around all day ?? You obviously ain't from New Yawk.
Everyone around here talks with their hands!
Ya gotta be an idiot not to understand that hand gestures and facial expressions convey a lot of information.
A while back...was it yesterday??
No.. no.. no.. further back.. last year.
Anyway, I saw a whole arguement in New York between two guys at street level while I was up about 19 floors looking out a window. I could tell exactly what was going on without hearing a word. I just followed the hand gestures and body language.
Well, I look forward to an interface that reads gestures. I've been berated by teachers and others about using my hands too much while talking. I often act as if there is a blackboard behind me when explaining complicated things. I draw diagrams with my fingertips in the air and later point to things I've "drawn" earlier even though neither I nor the person I am explaining things too can see these diagrams. It would be great if we were both using an augmented reality interface that would actually let me draw in thin air and record the digrams and display it to everyone in the conversation.
just realized the girl in jurassic park predicted the future by saying those lines...she was looking at a Mac I believe and said that line....I could be wrong though....speilberg knew... I think I'm going to help that idiot with the $3.8 million 4D shit....I'll integrate a Nintendo Power Glove as the VR new age mouse. And the screen can do some of that futuristic crazy shit like in that true to life film "Hackers". If I can just find my big red book.
Beer! It's what's for breakfast!
Little hand-held unit, pops up windows and a virtual keyboard as they're needed in free space. I can't wait to see if the heliodisplay can be shrunk down into a small enough package to bring that off. I think those things will be the wave of the near future if they can miniturize them enough.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
My XP desktop looks a lot like my Windows 95 desktop did almost 10 years ago. My Linux desktop is a little different (default bluecurve theme), but the general concepts are the same. People like familiarity, and a 2D theme goes well with a 2D display.
What I expect in 10 years, if the past 10 years are any indication of the speed of desktop evolution:
* Better displays on average. Big, crisp, bright, high resolution, high contrast, and especially wider.
* Similar UI elements as today, plus a few new ones. People don't like change if it involves taking something away.
* Faster response. Programs will load almost instantly. Maybe they'll just load when you install them, and be swapped out to non-volatile ram when not in use. Though 10 years ago I might have predicted we'd have this by now.
* Resolution independence. Quality aside, programs will look the same no matter what your screen resolution, and you can smoothly scale them to any size. I'm tempted to say we'll have a lot more vector graphics, but a lot of lazy designers will probably just use high resolution rasters.
* Mouseover/mouseout background window preview, maybe by alpha blending. If I move the mouse to a background window, I want it to somewhat show through the windows in front of it. Also, if I move the mouse away from a foreground window, I want to slightly see the windows behind it. I'm not 100% certain this'll look good though.
* If I'm lucky, maybe we'll have a mouse button mapped to opening a system menu whereever your mouse might be on the screen, centered under your mouse. This menu will be multi-column, approximately square shaped to reduce mouse movement and make effective use of space. Holding this button down while turning the mouse wheel will ideally cycle through my virtual desktops, rather than popping up a menu.
* Touchscreens may become standard, but many will still prefer mice for precision. I hope to see the ability to track multiple fingers/pointers dragging across the display.
* Better autocomplete in many programs. Tab should become my favorite key. Voice will not replace the keyboard, but only complement it. You can take my keyboard away after you pry it from my cold, dead hands. When I speak into a computer microphone, it'll probably usually be to communicate with real people.
* Better use of usage statistics. The desktop environment and programs will adapt so that most common actions require 1 click to initiate.
Ah, all that would be well and good. But what if the computer recognized that by "last week" it might include a couple days before or after the seven day period ending on the previous Saturday, particularly if there were no claims letters sent to Bob or Robert or Rob strictly "last week". And by "current spreadsheet", you don't mean the excel document you have open, but the up-to-date sheet of claims information your company has on record. Though when you refer to the "current spreadsheet" in 5 minutes, you'll be talking about a completely different document.
Picking up context to apply to keywords in a document or "reading" a document isn't difficult. Actually applying context to natural language and making accurate decisions about them is what's useful.
And of course, I'd much prefer, "I've got the claims letter you submitted to Bob last week-- it's approved. Shall I attach the current spreadsheet and forward it to Dave? I'll let you know if there are any changes..." but that might be asking a bit much. For now.
With the Enterprise computer able to do so much, why were these lowly human controlling it?
I think we're already approaching an asymptote in desktop UI. Future interfaces will be faster, smoother, have live raytraced shadows and hardware transparency and blah, but they'll be basically the same windows and mouse thingy as they have been for the last decade and a half. The big shift won't be better general UI, it will be a trend away from general UI and towards a profusion of single-task small devices with custom UI. Example, ipod. Another example, satnav units for cars.
I know this is suicide on slashdot, but take a look at the WinFS PDC demo.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Maybe the desktop interface of the future should look like the NeXT UI. Although Gnome has "assimilated" many features from MacOS it would be nice to see also some features of the NeXT system in Gnome. These features include things like NeXT menu system and "spatial interface" (meaning that the windows and tear-off menus stay where the user puts them). Especially lack of the latter feature is a constant annoyance in almost all interfaces.
I think so called object oriented traditional desktop is the best one (at least the best one we can build within the next 10-20 years). The things I expect from desktop UI are simplicity, clean design and "things just work" attitude (no need to configure/adjust dozens of things to make the environment usable). The current Gnome gets many of these things (at least almost) right.
Have you ever held a speech for 8 hours in a row? You don't want to do that. Believe me.
;)
Okay, we can say that what we need is something that *fast* in usage. There are only a few "interfaces" of you body that are on a thing you could call the "fast lane" we humans have in our brains. These are mainly the hands and the speech system (mouth and throat muscles).
So those two interfaces make sense, but using speech only makes sense if you use all informations avaliable, meaning mood/emotions and the subtile "meaning" in how it sounds.
Else you can stay with the hands.
Or even better: combine them.
But the best would be of course a direct neural adapter.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Why does it have to be that large of a 3D space. Why not something where there are multiple layers that you can interact with. OS X and Linux already have transparent windows. Instead of actually switching to a different window, why can't you interact with the window below the current one through a modifier key or some sort.
There has already been software that will let you video chat in a full screen that is transparent while you work on other things (http://rockfish.cs.unc.edu/pubs/TR05-010.pdf) This allows you to perform multiple things at a time with the same screen real estate.
Don't get me wrong, I really like Spotlight and the idea of a computerized assistant that I can talk to, but I think there is a lot more to a 3D computer desktop than just a 20,000 sq foot room. Think more like several layers that you can interact with simultaneously.