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10/GUI — an Interface For Multi-Touch Input

Posted by Soulskill on from the minority-report-without-the-arm-pain dept.

Naznarreb writes "R. Clayton Miller has an extremely impressive GUI concept he's calling 10/GUI (video; written description here). Essentially, it combines the high-bandwidth input possibilities of multi-touch interfaces with the ease and immediacy of a mouse. The video is quite interesting, and, for me at least, pretty jaw dropping. This is a dramatic re-imagining of the current mouse/screen schema, one that I think has significant potential."

7 of 344 comments (clear)

  1. Not for desktop pc's, but by sopssa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Theres still a few problems though. For one, mouse is an incredibly precise input device - you can pretty easily move it along same pixel axis, or get it precisely to a specific pixel. It's hard to do that with your fingers because the area they touch is a large one, it's not easy to just move your finger by one pixel and your hand tend to shake a little bit too. If you look at the video, you see everything in the interface is quite big and even a few small windows take lots of place.

    Other problem is that now your both hands lay on the wide touch area and you dont have a keyboard. If you put them side to side, you'll only have one hand on the touch area and dont get the full power of it. Moving hands between them all the time is inefficient. Typing on the touch area gives no feedback and again takes your hands of the "mouse".

    It would also be quite impossible to play FPS or other kinds of games with this type of setup.

    So no, I still dont see touch interfaces replacing the usual keyboard+mouse combo anytime soon. However, I would love to have this kind of system in my living room (either just for the tv, or the computer thats connected to tv screen). It's clumsy to have keyboard or mouse in living (at the moment I have MX Air -mouse, which is okayish), but this would be perfect for such job. Not for a desktop pc replacement though.

    1. Re:Not for desktop pc's, but by smitty777 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Another problem is the assumption of 10 digits. For example, this might be more difficult for someone that is missing a digit or is paralyzed in an arm. In that case, the mouse would have a definite advantage.

      --
      "Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
      Albert Einstein
    2. Re:Not for desktop pc's, but by Mysticalfruit · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Fine then, have a mouse as well for super detail work.

      I watched the video and I found in very interesting. As someone who's sitting in front of a 24" monitor and I've ~30 windows open, I totally get the clutter thing.

      With that all said, what I saw was lots of talk and lots of eye candy. If you go to the 10/GUI website it's completely devoid of any details about hardware, what OS it's going to be supported on, etc.

      Until there's more details, I'm calling vaporware on this...

      --
      Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
    3. Re:Not for desktop pc's, but by cwgmpls · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I understand that people with disabilities have computer input needs too. But I don't understand why the fact that we are all differently-abled should prevent people from using their abilities to their fullest capacity.

      Does the fact that some people are missing a digit or have paralysis in one arm mean that no one should propose playing a piano with ten fingers? Does that fact that some people don't have feet mean that pianos should not have foot pedals? Of course not.

      While we should move forward with good interface designs for people with disabilities, I don't see why we should stand in the way of people using the abilities they do have in a novel, more productive way.

  2. Overhyped by ledow · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How can you over-hype a one-paragraph summary?

    Five minutes into the video and I'm still none the wiser as to how this is supposed to be an improvement in the use of my computer, or more comfortable, or easier. The "real-world" demo towards the end doesn't seem at all impressive and leaves out an awful lot of computer uses (we'll start with gaming, because it's easier to pick on multitouch for that).

    Why is everyone determined to sell me multitouch but can't actually show a decent use that justifies the price/hassle/upheaval/software development costs?

  3. going in circles by jipn4 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Apple got its multitouch technology by buying a company called FingerWorks. FingerWorks' primary product was just like what 10/GUI describes: a multitouch surface that could either replace they keyboard or the mouse(pad). It largely failed in the market.

    People use the keyboard and mouse because they really work well. If people did want more DOF, it would be easy to add more sensors to a standard mouse, for example to record twisting, pushing, and other pressures, but even that isn't catching on.

    Another idea that keeps bubbling up is the idea of pressure sensitive keyboards; they also keep failing because the resulting interactions just become too complex and add little benefit.

    The real flaw in all these devices is the assumption that the limiting factor in communicating with machines is they "bandwidth" of they keyboard and mouse. It really isn't. Generally, people can think no faster than they can type and mouse, and speeding up the keyboard or mouse any further is pointless.

  4. An incremental hardware update putting on airs by SpaceToast · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I blogged this last night. Short version: fail.

    Problems:

    1. You just doubled the amount of space I need between myself and the monitor.

    2. Multitouch allows for more kinds of interaction: true! However, this interface steals ALL of them away from use by the applications.

    3. Left and right sides of the screen aren't discoverable. Might as well be top and bottom -- i.e. bottom of the screen for application launching (call it a "dock") and top of the screen for context-specific options (a sort of "bar" of "menus").

    4. Linear spatial overload of windows is no better than two-dimensional spatial overload of windows. Labelled zoom-all-the-way-out cheat no better than Expose and application switcher.

    5. Where does file management fit into this scheme?

    Lukas Mathis calls 10/GUI "one of the most dramatic reimaginations of the desktop user interface I've seen in a long time" but on examination it's an incremental hardware update with no real interface breakthroughs. Keyboard + mouse has gone on for far too long, as has the W.I.M.P. interface. A better direction would be a tactile multitouch surface which can be anything it needs to be, including a keyboard (for any language), coupled with a GUI that represents tasks and actors rather than objects in a space. 10/GUI does nothing about window and document clutter, squinting, scanning large lists, or making the computer's workings and status an organic part of its presentation. The video may be a slick investors' reel, but shows no real progress.