BumpTop, Pushing the Desktop Metaphor

Alranor writes "BumpTop is a new way of manipulating your GUI desktop with a graphics pen. Documents can be moved and piled (among other actions) as if they were real pieces of paper on a physical desktop. Simulated real physical interactions, such as documents pushing others out of the way as you move them around, are intended to increase the intuitiveness of the layout tool. Given the messiness of my desks at work and home, I'm not so sure this will work for me, but it's an interesting idea." There's a neat video demo linked from the site (and a "hip-hop overview") if you want to see BumpTop in action; unfortunately for Linux users, BumpTop seems to be Windows-only. As reader idangazit describes it, this is "not just another "me-too" alternative UI; a lot of effort and polish has been put into the (pen-based) interaction, resulting in a very natural way of interacting with collections of information. Less sci-fi than Minority Report, but far more likely to hit a desktop near you in the next few years."

Update: 06/22 16:55 GMT by T : As zdzichu reader points out in the comments below, a visually similar project called lowfat, with an equally impressive video demo, is being developed — with enough sponsorship, lowfat will go open source.

Comments

Impressive, but usability?..

[ilovegeorgebush]

It does look very cool, but I can't help thinking if it would actually be practical or usable.
Features such as the LassoMenu look awesome, but in all honesty, I can't see how I could apply it enough to be proactive.

Of course, developement of such technologies is always a good thing, and its good eye-candy if only that :)

Re:Impressive, but usability?..

[lcde]

I could definately see it being used in the tablet market. I don't think shifting through file systems with a pen would be much fun.

On a more 'futuristic' note: Wouldn't it be cool to have a desk like in The Island where the doctor brought up their files ON his desk. Now image a big desk with a touch panel as its face. This technology would be pretty cool. Pile up your documents, open them and a virtual keyboard/mouse appears.

Why emulate old technology?

[gasmonso]

The whole point of having a computer is to free yourself from paper. So why would you take a step back and try to digitally emulate a system that is antiquated? A computer offers endless opportunities for organizing and storing data, I see this as a step back.

http://religiousfreaks.com/

Re:Why emulate old technology?

[ZackStone]

Because,as you can see from the video, the amount of information that is conveyed in a pile of papers is much larger than you could ever achieve on a desktop. Then what about folders, directories, or labels? Well, so far none of these could communicate, for example, your workload at a glance. How many times have you filed something away so neatly that you can't find it hirearchically (is that even a word?) and have to resort to searching!? --ZS

Re:Why emulate old technology?

[netsavior]

I guess you have never met my users.

They print out an excel document with 3 cells so they can "read" it. No joke one time the 1st VP printed out an email I sent him that had a 6 digit order count, and no other text... he read it out loud, then threw it in the recycling. They keep giant boxes of paper docs that are printed off from our document management system, and are easily retrievable. We have a 100% paperless system, and at any given time the users have 10-20 sheets of paper on their desks, all of them digitally accessable.

I don't have any paper on my desk, haven't since the early 1990s, but this advancement is not intended for me. It is for "Joe Paper-Lover"

The trouble is...

[Orange Goblin]

...you'll spend all your time playing with the physics engine, and none of it doing any actual work.

Dual Screen

[cabazorro]

To understand the power of a simpler human-computer interface one can see as an example the Nintendo DS. I have handed the gadget to people that never in their lives have use one or a computer for that matter (brain-age game). And by using the stylus and the touch-screen they get to play with it almost immediately.
The mouse needs to be replaced by a touch screen with a stylus.

Re:Star Trek 42

[Gulthek]

It is better, it can be arbitrarily large!

Imagine it! Documents and photos and games and toys stretching out for virtual miles! You'll have to code a flight sim just to see all your data!

Then might as well add topography to represent groups of data. A gleaming ivory tower for academic research. A giant drive-in for movies and tv files. A dystopian city structure for work related folders. A dark ocean for the internet, full of dangers and terrors and fun. A huge cave would lead into the purgatory of your "recycle bin" files, where they wait to be reborn or fed to the maw of no return.

Finally, an OS for managers

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Honestly, most of the software managers/bosses I have worked for can't think abstractly. They need to SEE prototypes, need to USE test software, or at least see pictures and text about how its supposed to work. Start describing software to them without visual aids and their eyes just gloss over.

Same goes for when managers start using a computer, I mean, the O.N./O.F.F. switch escapes them sometimes, and higher level concepts such as organizing files in folders is just too far beyond their capabilities.

So, an OS desktop that lets you see all your files and folders looking like pieces of paper and folders (I bet they even have email looking like envelopes too!) on a desktop that allows you to pile them up and look like stacks of paper and folders and envelops, what a concept!!!!

I guess ICONS that look like paper and folders that you can place anywhere on your desktop isn't good enough. It requires too much thought to associate an icon with a file or a folder. A picture of a piece of paper on a square is too hard to rationalize as being a document.

This is a revolutionary GUI concept and I can't wait for OS X or Windows to implement this idea as using computers today, with those pesky abstract icons, is just too darn hard, at least for managers.