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"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."
How do you not have an interface?
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
This is an exciting setup...and I agree with his assertion that the OLPC (one laptop per child) is sort of like introducing millions of children to our inane weaknesses instead of our strengths. Really, I know that something like this wouldn't completely remove the need for a keyboard and such for many years, but it is a striking evolutionary step forward.
Just think how easy all those dramatic situations would have been in the 24th century if the Starship enterprise had some of these!
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
Hand me a doughnut while I work on this would ya? Everyone take a moment and look BETWEEN the keys on your keyboard. Now put that all on your monitor.
Ok, everyone realizes this was recorded in February right?
Last I checked its the end of October.
Jeff Han has been covered I don't know how many times on how many sites (probably on Slashdot too - haven't checked the archives yet).
There's no such thing as no interface btw.
Yes, you can remove a lot of the mode-switching with different gestures, but there is always going to be some sort of interface to allow you to access other functions.
In my mind, once you get above about 4 or 5 gestures, things start to become confusing for people again - what was that gesture again? Thus defeating the purpose of no interface.
Sure, it's neat - giant touchscreen with multiple points of contact and gestures that zoom and pan.
And this is what's going to "change the way we interact with computers"? Odd as it may sound, most application interfaces don't revolve around zooming and panning; there are considerably harder problems left to solve.
Funny he should mention RSI too, because that keyboard that will free you from the bonds of conformity, and that's displayed on a hard surface, will kill your wrists in a matter of months.
The thing is great for the Earth-type applications, but that's about it. It's cool technology - why must every innovation promise to change all future computer interactions?
(btw, if that picture viewer's "Pile of Crap" metaphor is where UI design is headed, I'm never upgrading again. I have my desk to act as a pile of crap, it won't make me feel more comfortable with my computer if it emulates that)
sic transit gloria mundi
Everybody clean between your keys. Now clean your monitor.
It's sad when choosing an installation directory on your own qualifies you as an "advanced user."
This is not from the Minority Report that was released in 2002. This was shown in shuttle interface in Earth the Final Conflict which aired in 1997.
This type of interface was also in The first $20 millions is the hardest. But that came out in the same year as The Minority report.
Fight Spammers!
I recently attended a demo of a similar device at my company. The pentagon already has purchased units and the company is trying to branch out to private sector applications. They were using for collaboration with geographical software (gis data).
Right, but again, this was a demo application that was designed to look neat and take advantage of the multitouch screen... not be useful. How much time a day do you spend rearranging your photos on a lightboard? While it looked cool, it didn't do much. You couldn't sort, there was no categorization, no album interface, no way to post them, no real photo manipulation, or basically anything that would be useful for anything beyond browsing pr0n. (Any bets on whether this was their very first app?)
What I'm saying is that while this is neat for quick applications that don't require much text, it would be painful for multi-hour coding or authoring. And this is what most people do. For this kind of use, there is one absolute requirement: you don't need to look at it. And if you're not looking at it, you don't need an LCD powering it. (Any sort of predictive or dynamic keyboard violates this rule and makes typing require too much thought.)
Yes, touchscreen interfaces are very neat. But they're not the answer to the world's problems. They won't magically make you be able to produce art where the mouse or tablet or whatever was getting in the way before. It may streamline things a bit, but it doesn't remove the need for skill.
Again, only in very limited situations. Plus, onscreen keyboard means losing screen space, which is arguably far more valuable than desk space.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
On topic: I feel this technology really could grow... I would like to see it more like the Nintendo DS. With Dual screens. One being your main form of input. Perhaps by having an overlay application of a scalable keyboard similar to the one featured in the video. And you can use the primary display for, well, display. I dunno. It's late and I'm tired... if you understand what I mean, mod me up!
As he was manipulating the map application it really jumped out at me how cool it would be to run a Mandelbrot set app that way. It would have made a fun and awesome addition to the presentation. If I were working in his lab that would almost certainly be the first thing I would add to the system.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Very neat and completely useless. I don't know about you guys, but I find it much easier to find my data in my nice hierarchical filesystem than by digging through a garbage can fan full of papers, which is what this GUI simulates.
Property is theft.
What were they supposed to do, write a transcript so you could read it with Lynx? Or maybe offer the entire video is an animated GIF?
Not everything can be fully accessible to everyone.
I'd wager that having it as Flash video makes it more accessible to more people than say, embedding it with other proprietary video software like Windows Media Player or Real Player, or even offering the file for direct download using some codec that you assume everyone has (not everyone can offer 10 different encoded videos so you can watch it on fringe systems). Flash video is, fortunately or unfortunately, the lowest common denominator across the widest variety of systems at this point.
I have an interface in front of me right now. I have pen, paper; I've got a camera... if I want to record a visual of something, I have to pick up my camera. Never mind that the camera has one of these "non-intuitive interfaces" that we (rather, the article) are trying to remove, I still have to do something to get it done. Anything that I do interfaces with reality.
One of the goals of the iconic desktop originally was to duplicate the real desktop in some fashion to make things simpler for humans to interact with their work on a computer, so that there wouldn't be too much of a translation layer to build between real and virtual work. Similarly, some try to implement handwriting recognition to remove the interface of the keyboard from the writing process.... until they realize that geeks like us can't write for crap and can type ten times faster as well.
Regardless, of course, there's got to be some way to tell the computer that you actually want to resize the strange hand-like object on that screen the guy had (I think it was a hand, my sound was off and I lost interest rapidly) rather than add to the drawing. There's got to be some way to change modes, as he did between drawing the outline, getting it filled in, and then moving it around - that's all interface. Sure, it looked sweet that there wasn't any menu pull-down happening, no mouse, but really, you've got a pretty damn simple application that can be manipulated in this fashion.
Do anything complex, and you'll have to have a more complex interface suddenly.
"Computer... Computer... (McCoy hands Scotty the mouse) Aye. Hello computer." -- Scotty
Even talking to a computer would be an interface..... a pretty complex one, though definitely one that could be considered intuitive, if you could use your chosen language for commanding it rather than some cryptic "ok, list the files, sort by date then name.... uh.... ok that one no that shit fucking computer where's my mouse"
His keyboard Idea sounds pretty cool. I would like to see some more practical applications than what he showed. Games would be cool with this interface. I think the idea is great, moving objects on your screen as if they were actually on your desk. But gestures will still need to be learned. Also, we would all get neck problems from staring down all the time at the screen rather than looking straight ahead. All in all, this technology seems very interesting.
Mark