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The Future of Human-Computer Interaction
ChelleChelle writes "Starting with the Xerox Alto and the Star, ACM Queue briefly covers the history of human-computer interaction from past to present. It doesn't stop there, however. Using a hypothetical situation involving context-awareness in cellphones, the author lays out his thoughts on the future of HCI, offering opinions, advice, and examples."
Of course, for the vast majority of tasks done on a computer there is absolutely no advantage to a fully 3D environment. How does a fully 3d environment help me write a report? Track expenses? Find data (unless the data is 3d)? Unless you are working with 3d datasets (or games), there really isn't much (if any) advantage to a 3d environment.
I'd be happy to be proved wrong, but I don't see much real advantage for the vast majority of computer users from the examples you gave - or any other 3d environment.
That said, I've had an opportunity to use a CAVE system for a signficant amount of time, and there is no doubt in my mind that a true 3d environment makes it a thousand times easier to work with 3d data - I just don't think that most people would gain anything from this, and trying to force 2d applications into 3d is generally pointless and in fact counterproductive. Makes great eye candy, though.
I was more surprised by this "Personal computing launched with the IBM PC." WTF!? Writing about the history of personal computers and they can't even get that right?
It's nice that researchers are looking to the future, but HCI has a long way to go as it is. Cell phones are probably one of the best examples we have right now. Almost everyone has one, and they aren't going away any time soon. But by and large, they still suck. We have arguably cool hardware like the Razr and LG's Chocolate and the Treo, but oh man does the software suck. I've yet to meet anyone who doesn't have some complaint about the way their cell phone behaves; for most people, it's a rather long list!
No, HCI is still looking for respect in many companies. Until the user interface is treated as a first class citizen of the design process we're going to continue to have amazing hardware hamstrung by terrible, tacked on, unintuitive interfaces.
Most of the new and upcoming technology that people *like* to talk about, is all the fluff. This is what marketing executives use to sell their products. The reality is that it amounts to nothing more than eye candy. People are attracted by good looking things and great sounding features, but ultimatley stay with something because of ease of use and performance.
People appreciate things that look nice, like buying a new car...if it is a really great looking car, it is great for the first week, but if it is slow, drives like a dog and guzzles the fuel (a little heavy on the resources me thinks...) then ultimatley you end up hating the car, and if there are better options available you tend to go and find something better, because ultimatley we derive more satisfaction from a car that performs well....looks alone do not do it.
Too much candy will give you a fat head. People are initially drawn into things that look nice because they are visually appealing and easy to figure out how to use. But once you know how to use it, you then want to cut the bull and find out the fastest and easiest way to do it.
Hard work is just an accumulation of the easy things that you didn't do when you should have.
With GPS, your phone could at least have "location awareness" to know you are in a strip club.
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I'd say the next major leap in human-computer interface will most likely involve us boning our computers.
the mods may say you posted flamebait, but to me it's a flame that warms my heart. rock on, brother! --chebucto
You're wrong. We don't need AI or awesome speech recognition technology. What we have is enough.
I blew out the ulnar nerves in my elbows... not as bad as carpal tunnel syndrome, but enough to force me to write code by voice for three years instead of typing. For example, the initial version of HDL Analyst in Synplify was written almost entirely by voice. By the end I'd written over 1,600 emacs macros that I could speak to help me do my job.
So, I'm not completely unfamiliar with voice interfaces to computers.
What we do need is a new suite of operating systems and applications that are written from scratch to use a combination of voice and pointer devices. Text entry should be by voice. Menus, selection, scrolling, button pushing, etc should all be done with a selection device (mouse, pen, finger.... whatever). It's really that simple.
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