"Interface-Free" Touch Screen at TED

Down8 writes, "Jeff Han, an NYU researcher, has recently shown off his 'interface free' touch screen technology at the TEDTalks in Monterey. Some sweet innovation that I hope makes it to the mainstream soon." The photo manipulation interface is reminiscent of "Minority Report."

Comments

Re:Interface-free?

[fsterman]

The whole "Why shouldn't my computer take three nanoseconds to turn on, read my mind, and then never ever have errors!!!?!?one1" thing is a very amateur approach to the problem, if you ask me. Sure, it would be nice, but I'm absolutely sure it's technically impossible.

Thanks for the insight, Troll.

Windows, cutting edge of OS design! Raskin did it in the 80's. You could check out orthogonal persistence OS's. Maybe none right _now_ can do it in a few nanoseconds, but most are using hacks on existing computer hardware. Look at what LinuxBIOS has been able to do. It's not just possible, it's been done.

"Why should you have to double-click anything? What does Ctrl+D mean one thing in one program and a completely different thing in another? And what's the point of the Yes/No confirmation if the user is in the habit of clicking Yes without thinking about it?" All of those things make sense in the context they are being used in, and they're relatively intuitive. After all, it's not the programmers fault the user is an idiot, especially with something as simple as a yes/no dialog box, as long as the dialog box is written in language comprehensible for the designed userbase.

I wouldn't bite this obvious troll bait if only some people didn't believe you. "Intuitive" is "Learned Behavior" NOT what humans are good at, or can do. They habituate, just like you habituate to gasing the car on a green light, or at least many of us do. But how many times have you caught yourself pressing the pedal for the wrong green light? Probably less than everyone reading this has clicked yes or no on a dialog box without reading it. If you had read the book you would have found answers to avoiding such dialog boxes, and how to make it so the user is forced to actually make a choice, they can't just habituate to hitting "yes."