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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.
Muhahaha. I plan to get a jump on the competition by patenting the 4D interface. It's like a 3D interface, but better ;). I'll show Eolas how it's done (by spanking MS for even more money).
But in all seriousness, I am working on the 4D metaphor. I have a prototype I've been working on up on my website, just haven't had the time to finish it.
Cheers
I am John Hurt.
It's a UNIX system! I know this!
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
Current interfaces aren't 2D, they are 2.5D. There is a z-axis, it's just less immediately obvious than the x and y axes. Ever put one window on top of another? Yep, that's depth.
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. At least with a 2.5D interface, our hands are resting on something.
The other problem is that the value 3D provides over 2.5D is very small. What does it actually get us? We can already put things behind and in front of each other. We can already zoom in and out of structures. We can't rotate well - but that's not something that I think stops useful things from happening.
What we need aren't 3D interfaces, what we need are smarter interfaces. Not necessarily natural language processing, but simple stuff that works and is practical. Tab completion in UNIX shells is a good example. Intellisense in IDEs is another. Clippy is rumoured to have actually been useful in the lab, before it was hobbled for desktop computers. Spotlight is making things easier to find.
These are the kinds of interface enhancements that will be of most use, and they can come along piece-by-piece without anybody noticing, without needing new hardware, and without users being forced into a new paradigm.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
This looks cool.
There are many, many interface ideas out there; anyone who's attended a SIGCHI or similar conference can attest to just how many, how varied - and how weird - they can be.
However, it's getting pretty clear that the WIMP stuff we have really is pretty good. We hit upon something which while far from perfect still is reasonable. Other interface ideas need to be substantially better, and without serious flaws, and that is difficult to achieve.
Having a 3D component is a good example. There is little doubt that it will be used in _some_ form at some point in the future. It is also clear that getting it really right is not easy; so many projects have tried and failed already. When what we have is already pretty good, the bar is very high for mistakes, drawbacks and problems.
To connect back with some earlier desktop discussions recently, this is exactly why having a multitude of desktops is a good idea - not just two, but ten or more projects, all trying various ideas and directions. Chances are one of them at least will stumble upon a new, better way of doing something; a new, better way that the others then are free to copy and improve on. That is also why it is so important to have more than one toolkit - ultimately you are constrained to what the toolkit allows you to do, and thus you need more than one to take into different directions.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
By then the average desktop will be powerful enough to handle this smoothly. 3D Desktop. http://desk3d.sourceforge.net/
Just as was mentioned, 3D interfaces do not add a TON of detail because when it all comes down to it... we can only truely view things on a 2D level. I have experimented with some 3d desktop betas that are floating around the web, and I have not really found anything that gave me any advantage over the traditional interface. Adding screens, and using multiple destktops seems to make the most sens. The true future of desktop interfaces must focus on how we can interact with them. Thought control would be optimal, but even some gloves one could wear to control things could dramatically increase productivity. Screens in glasses (which are even cool now) have some great potential too. These have the advantage of privacy, and allow a much bigger display when everything is put in perspective. Ultimately the best display would be some sort of direct stream to the brain, just bypassing the eyes. Till we get to the point where we patch windows to our brains... (OH NO... BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH AGAIN!)... or now that I think if it... once we patch an OS other than windows to our brain we will only then be able to make the jump to an effective 3d environment, because then we dont have to worry about seeing the extra dimensions... we just comprehend them.
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PS. My eyes have stopped hurting now.
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.
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Not KILL
I remember reading about "where interfaces will be in 5 or 10 years..." I also remember playing with those Apple demos of desktop and browser technologies from '96-'97.
Where are we now with Windows and Mac OS? Just refinements of what works or doesn't work from 10 years ago. In 2015 we'll be having the same articles and little will have changed.
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.
I introduce first to you the humble progress bar. A good progress bar does two things. It shows how far along something is (percentage complete) and it show that activity is taking place and your computer has not just frozen again.
So in days past when screen were primitive you simply had a row of dots appearing with maybe if your lucky the occasional 5% added to give something like ......5%........10%....
Add the capabilty for backspace and you usually got a little spinning character made up out of -\|/ to show action taking place. Some more advancement and you got a full bar like 0****5****10****15..| (work with me here this is hard to do in text)
But then GRAPHICS were added. YEAH. So now you could draw a bar slowly being filled (but for some reason loosing the activity indicator). Color was added and now you could make the bar turn from red to green.
2.5d add shadow effect to make the bar appear round. 3d and it can stand up like a real seperate bar on your screen.
And what is the freaking point? Well none. All of them did their work and clearly showed what was happening. Okay they became better looking but it gave no real advantage.
So are there other tasks that can benefit from better graphics? I think you have the following main type of jobs on a pc.
Yes I would like a 3d interface when I am manipulating or inspecting the relations between objects on my pc. But is this a common activity? Well I look up at the tabs of my opera browser. Current desktops already have a sort of 2.5d and perhaps my tabs would be clearer if tabs of new pages where "behind" the tabs they originated from. I arrived at this input screen by opening a new tab from the story page (helps me remember where I was when I am finished here) but this tab is at the end of the tabs not indicating that it has a relation with a tab almost at the beginning.
Still with me? Another example. My music collection has a lot of soundtracks. Trying to organize it completly is a nightmare. Especially if I also want to organize it by genre (so I can easily switch depending on mood). Luckily I am on linux so I can use symlinks so an album can be both in
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Preview screenshots of Vista beta are circulating here:1 3.html
http://www.unitedti.org/lofiversion/index.php/t41
You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!
People don't work like that though. Do you think the LASIK industry is predicated on people liking wearing glasses? They do a good job of hiding my broken nose.
You know what I'd really like? The same interface I have now, on a 30" LCD that costs $1000. Hell, make that three of them. I'm using three 17" LCDs right now and two notebook computers next to me. What does joe sixpack want bad? a 60" plasma TV.
That I suspect is what the future will bring.
You want my predictions for 10 years?
Great big, high resolution displays, and probably several of them.
A wireless keyboard sitting in front of that display.
A wireless mouse sitting right next to it.
Next to that monster display will be a pad of engineering paper, and a pencil.
A big plasma TV on the wall, perhaps displaying video conferencing.
No guarantees on where the computer is - probably nowhere to be seen.
Perhaps a PDA or remote storage device capable of wireless networking.
That's the future. What's on the screen will probably look very much like what is there now.
..don't panic
The most obvious example I can think of is writing. Using syllabaries or ideograms is clearly not as good a technology as using an alphabet. The learning curve is vastly worse, the total number of symbols that must be memorized is orders of magnitude higher, etc., etc.
And yet a pretty high percentage of people in the world today read and write in languages that do not use alphabetic writing. Japanese or Cantonese readers/writers are not going to switch to an alphabet anytime soon, despite its many advantages, because of the sheer cultural and historical weight behind their current approach.
I don't know if we're at that point with computer interfaces yet, but the longer we go the harder it is going to be to get people away from GUIs using WIMP. Even non-PC tools now use this metaphor for UI - for example, your cell phone probably has some basic WIMP approach. If some 'innovative' new 3D tool just makes this prettier, well, that will be nice, but it won't really change anything much. If it really changes things, it may not succeed even if it's a clearly better technology, because so many people are getting locked into our current approach.
I can't help but notice that this kind of inertia is what keeps IT shops from migrating to Linux. It's clearly a vastly superior tool in every way to Windows. Ten years ago the switch might have been easier, if Linux had been readier. But now, IT is much more tightly coupled into corporate infrastructures, and there is a lot more inertia to be overcome for such a dramatic change. (Even if the change is for the better.)
One thing that technology geeks like us forget is that, for almost everyone else, the technology is just a tool, not an end in itself. It has to fit into the overall picture. Changing something (office suite, operating system, interface approach, whatever) is really tough for most people, even if the end result is that the change is for the better. Us geeks think that change (buzzword: 'innovation') is automatically good, but for most people it is automatically bad. The change has provide something so vastly better in their opinion that they will put up with change.
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?
Not very circumspect, I see.
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Screenshots
3D? Okay, visualize trying to find a real piece of paper in a box in a 20,000 SQFT warehourse. Now, if you want to wander around a virtual 3D space doing the same thing like a rat in a maze looking for the cheese, feel free.
So, to my mind, 3D organizational spaces are the wrong direction. Spotlight and Google Desktop are the first steps in the right direction. Why should I have to organize my work and documents into trees of folders and project hierarchies? Why add keywords when the computer should understand context? Shouldn't the computer be able to do that kind of scut work?
Picture the perfect assistant. "Donna, find that claims letter I sent to Bob last week... no... no... yeah that one. Scroll down... down... okay. It's approved. Attach the current spreadsheet and forward it to Dave. Oh, and let me know if he has any changes."
Now, picture "Donna" as your automated, computerized, super-assistant, with whom you can communicate by voice from anywhere, anytime.
Live with a program like Spotlight for a while, and you start to find yourself bypassing the Finder and Desktop and folders altogether. What's needed is a better way to communicate (voice), and a system smart enough to know who Bob is, who Dave is, what a claims letter is, understands "last week" as a variable period, and can put it all together.
Yeah, it's the Star Trek interface.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
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.
It'll look like GNOME, of course!
The Farewell Tour II
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.
Both of you are misleaded, thinking as programmers. The concept of abstraction is totally foreign to the average user (at least when related to task automation). Also average users don't need universal programmability - just "good-enough" one. They would have little use for whole Turing completeness.
No, the silver bullet are related to direct manipulation (removing abstraction and simplifying input) and programming by example (again removing abstraction, and simplifying depuration). I should know, I'm a researcher in the End-user Development field.
Natural language? Yes, that might help to some extent - but only until the first "gotcha", due to the inherent ambiguity, ruins the completion of the supposedly automated task.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
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.
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.
What a horrible article. This guy sounded as if he had no idea what he was talking about.
... However, once you hit three dimensions, all configurations are possible without crossings. Adding a fourth or fifth doesn't have any further beneficial effect. Admittedly there is some hand-waving going on here; but the result has implications for some possible interface designs; and it points to using three dimensions.
If you draw a bunch of dots on a piece of paper you will not be able to draw lines joining the dots in all possible configurations unless the lines cross (given some sufficiently large number of dots. I think 5 might do it).
You think five might do it? Try four. Why don't you think a little longer until you know.
I've heard the assertion that adding a single extra dimension doesn't buy you much organizational power and that the added navigational complexity isn't worth it.
1. N dots in two dimensions have lines that cross
2. N dots in three dimensions do not have lines that cross
=>
Three dimensions is better for organizing!
I have no idea where that came from. What a non-argument.