Researching Interface--Define and assess an innovative interface and/or technology from a historical perspective. Provide evidence of success and adoption. You may also discuss an unsuccessful interface that was innovative, but "before its time." What characteristics define an innovative interface? Is it just usage? What topic would you like to examine? Post 2-3 sentences.
Submitted by browning on Wed, 09/13/2006 - 9:58pm.
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Browning, Tonya - STS 331
The Humane Interface is the idea that computers have evolved in a direction that doesn't take into consideration the people who have to use them, and proposes a new direction for computer interfaces, one grounded in how we think, how we react, how we pay attention to things, etc.
Proposed by Jef Raskin, the original designer of the Macintosh computer, and brought to fleeting life in the Canon Cat, the Humane Interface treats all input as sacrosanct: you can never lose any work and you never have to save. It is modeless: whenever you perform an action, that action will always work the same no matter what, there are no different tools to select that function differently from each other. It is efficient: you can start working immediately, there is no need to launch applications or look for files in folders, everything is always there, always on, at all times.
The Humane Interface was mostly ignored at the time Jef Raskin started pushing it. His book explains a lot, but it's also rather tedious, and provides far too few modern examples and illustrations. I propose doing a visual treatment of the ideas in the Humane Interface, distilling it into the salient points, comparing and contrasting it with modern UIs (XP, OS X, Vista), and providing an easy way to get into it without having to digest the whole tome.
This can lead into the final project of showing a Humane Interface that's more than just a word processor.
I've got two ideas, one of them is definilty more suited towards a final project, though if enough infomration was avaliable it could serve as a good research project in preperation for the final project.
I don't know if anyone here has worked in food service, but I've been waiting tables and a popular coporate restarunt where we run a point-of-sale computer system under the brand Aloha. I know Aloha is common, and there aren't many others. The POS computers are what the servers use to put in orders, print tickets, make payments, and anything else along those lines. Strangely enough, the interface on these machines is horrible. It's really hard to explain, but for those of you who have used them, they are laughingly bad. It'd be interesting to see how these progressed over time and (for the final project) explore a completely new way of doing this.
But, something that I know can be done much easier, would be to document and research the development of the web browser. I could talk about why and go on and on about it, but I'm sure we all understand why trying to sort of this long history would be somewhat of an interesting task.
I think doing an analysis of point-of-sale systems is much more interesting than web browsers. The original design for the web was one where you could edit pages and upload new pages just as easily as you only read them now. The Back and Forward buttons were supposed to be temporary. Stuff like that.
But POS systems are so wildly varied, and none of them seem to have been designed by people with actual experience taking orders and waiting tables. Just an overview of different systems and how bad they all are would be neat, I think.
as the rest of you, I have been racking my brain for awesome inspiration... unfortunately my brain is weak and easily distracted by shiny colorful things. :/
So hows about VR!!! I can remember going to cool tech expos in the convention center and getting to put on the crazy helmet and grab a sword and kill stuff. Those were the good 'ol days. I know that the armed forces and doctors still use VR for emulation and training. Also, Nintendo put out a VR system years and years ago.
I also really like VB UIs a lot (vision based user interface). I know universities have been working on them for years, but as of yet it hasn't made it to the mass market. I believe some Drs use it for their mobility-impaired patients. It's a lot faster than current methods of input too because it gets to bypass a lot of firing off synapses and controlling motor responses further from the brain (i.e. doesn't require the user to tell the hand to move the mouse to move the curser whose position is then re-evaluated by the eyes and repeat process.) Of course it's not really a universally designed interface because people with vision impairments would be completely unable to use it. :(
me and my friends have been working on an "online comic book", in quotations because it is much more than that. it combines each of some of our interests and hobbies: film noir, poetry, comic books, music, art, dark scary things, etc. it will be more of an experience with a storyline, using stylized narrative, powerful images, illustrations, flash animation, etc. think quentin tarantino's use of slapping his favorite parts of movies together in his movies, kill bill, etc. but in an online story format, mix illustration, painting, audio, real photos, flash animation, to tell a tale.
The difficult part, which i wish to investigate as a midterm is the interface, which we realized will make or break our idea. What makes a gui, easy to navigate, yet stylized, pleasing, innovative, are all things necessary for our future success.
Tog's first principles was a good read for this.
I'm sure at least a few of you are already avid diggers...
I more or less discovered it this summer and find it entirely addicting. In short it's a site that let's users submit articles/links from around the web and vote ( or "digg" ) what other people have submitted, the stories that get dugg alot make it to the front page. The interface is incredibly simple and intuitive, every story link has a "Digg it!" button next to it; it has some other neat features as well, like comments, moderating, friends, etc., but for the most part all you need to do is click that digg button. It's still fairly young, and has some kinks to work out, but it's popularity has exploded over the past couple years, no doubt due to it's interface. There's definatly some parallels to be drawn with del.icio.us as well...
I've always wondered how they work, and I think it would be cool to look at the evolution of heads up displays in airplanes. It might be neat to look at the first analog controls from vintage planes in the early part of the century, following the evolution to present day displays. Given the speed with which the user needs to ascertain information from the display, I figure these must be pretty clean/slick interfaces.
Look into Steve Mann and the Eyetap. It's the idea that the heads-up display covers the entire field of vision of one eye, and there's a camera in front of that. So you're watching a video of what you would otherwise be seeing, and the computer can manipulate that image in real-time. E.g. turn that billboard you pass as you drive down the highway into the title of the next song on your playlist, translate that chinese menu for you, and project a virtual computer screen into the air, showing your grocery list as you walk down the aisles, and giving you arrows to show you where the next item is.
steve mann is a god and a turbogeek. i really like the trick he does with corporate logos he doesn't like (as you describe with the billboard)--he never "sees" a coca-cola logo in his HUD eye. it's just not there on the coke machine or the can of soda.
i think there are a lot of areas that this is coming into mainstream usage--especially vehicularly. there's some system in newish cadillacs that has an IR camera scanning the road ahead and projecting what it sees on top of your normal view--so you see that deer in the road before your headlights get to it, for instance.
good luck!
I've been debating in my head what to do.. and the most interesting so far has been the keyboard.
Sure, the layout of the keys hasn't changed much, but everything else has... In the typewriter days, they keys were elevated and round, until the IBM selectric came around. I even remember an argument about that, when an organization wanted to standardize every aspect of the keyboard, but the Selectric broke all of those rules, like key pitch, travel, etc.
And even comparing the modern keyboards, how those from, say, an Apple II feel better / different than, say, a new laptop.
I'm not sure how far this can go, but it seems interesting to me...
that was about as creative a topic i could come up with that i actually use daily. while it's true that the *standard* keyboard hasn't changed, there have been a lot of innovations like chording keyboards, ergonomic keyboards, and this one which i'm about to buy:
there's a lot of research out there by efficiency experts on dvorak vs qwerty, and then there are other input methods like the twiddler. i think this is rich enough to do a paper on, but i guess tonya will have to let us know if it's sufficiently interface-y and not just a pure input method.
there are actually different layouts for us keyboards, one of the most awesome being dvorak ones. They take some getting used to, but you can work hella faster once you have one. :D
What sucks though is if you learn the dvorak keyboard and then go to say the public library, you have to muddle through using a regular one again. What would be cool, is a keyboard that could be reprogrammed on the fly to whatever format you want it to be in. I guess the way i would imagine it is a keyboard with a small display on each key that displayed the value of the key. That way to reprogram it you would just need to the choose format you want. I guess it doesn't hold if the orientation of all the keys was totally different.
I came across a BBC article discusses an alternate interface called "audio clouds" , which allows users to control gadgets using sound and small gestures. It's being developed by the University of Glasgow. The tech is not specifically for the impaired but it does seem to offer promising information about how to make interfaces other than the standard GUI available to more users.
Im interested in the history and future of zooming user interface. This whole zooming/floating interface has become rather popular recently; for example ... www.etsy.com's searching options.
PAD++ was the first and evolved into the piccolo (sun and java). These are similar to the iWorld products but also very different.
Im not sure if this is exactly what I want, maybe leaning toward more interactive video art technologies but I dont know, we'll see.
Also, I dont know if I should narrow this down to one specific tech. or the history of the ZUI in general.
-s
I'm tossing around a lot of random ideas in my head right how. I like the idea of going really old-school and doing mechanical interfaces, like the first cars and the evolution of the metaphor of the dashboard. Or what about going really current and researching Google Maps? (Or what about maps and general, exploring the high seas and all that, then moving onto Google maps and that cool 3D table in one of our readings). Or iPods (which I don't own). Or tabbed browsing (which rocks).
There are also some interfaces that I wish I could fix, but that I don't consider innovative, like DVD menus. Or ATMs and credit/debit card scanners. Or my alarm clock/CD player/radio combo.
I haven't been able to decide between a few topics:
1) The :CueCat, a failed attempt at having a computer peripheral that acted as a barcode scanner that could scan ads or published information and pull up the appropriate website or extra information.
2) Sony Betamax (although it was a successful video format and more crisp than VHS, it was defeated by other economic factors)
3) The gaining popularity of self-checkout at grocery stores and small goods/home improvement stores.
I'm leaning toward the :CueCat...
I noticed that I seem to be on a never ending search for the perfect media player. I've gone through Windows Media Player, Winamp, and now iTunes. (I'm probably the only person who uses iTunes but doesn't have an iPod.) So I think it would be interesting to incorporate my search into the midterm. I honestly don't think any of the media players I've currently worked with are "innovative" or "ahead of its time" but they certainly do try very hard to boast that.
I'm thinking of downloading a few other media players and comparing the interfaces and what are each of their benefits. I'm not sure I'll actually be able to find what I consider a successful interface but it'd certainly be fun to try and find one. There's a really strange one I've heard of called MoodLogic that apparently is supposed to sort your music by your moods... Sounds strange.
I'm hoping that something can be developed out of this...
I work in retail and I've been interested in our credit card terminals as a kind of user interface. Our store just received new ones that are supposedly so technologically advanced that they can stop identity theft, however we're still required to ask for IDs. We've also been experiencing issues with disabled persons and left-handed people not being able to sign on the terminal screens. Additionally, a few people have complained that they're still worried people can see their PIN when they enter it in and have complained that our old debit terminals that utlized buttons instead of a little plastic stylus were much better.
I think this counts as a user interface and I'm working on expanding this topic!
-Katie
I agree, the user interface, in terms of physical interface, feedback and interaction are completely relevant here. Since my company isn't in this business, it's of particular interest to me because I have argued a number of times that the perception of success/problems on the terminal side can damage the Brand (in terms of the cc the person is using).
Expanding on the video game theme, I would like to research the Neo-Geo AES/MVS as a technology that was ahead of its time. At the time,and for years to follow, it was without comparison the most technologically advanced home entertainment system available.In a way it pioneered the implementation of "backward-compatibility" in video games and the notion of identical cross-platform product release(In a way that Sega for instance will be unable to sustain when moving from XBOX to 360). The main reason for its unpopularity stemmed from a prohibitive price tag( by the standard of the times) and subsequent lack of third party developer interest.
Hi Jamaar (you threw me there for a sec on the name), I agree with your topic and would be interested to hear more about it. Price point is a driver in terms of market forces, and third party adoption is also crucial for early success.
I would like to discuss the innovative design of anonymous peer-2-peer networks. Napster, Kazaa, and Bittorrent have each offered a cutting edge interface for the average joe to network and communicate in ways that very few could have imagined years ago. I think that P2P is still "before its time" and the true media sharing revolution has hardly even started yet. If you have heard of a program called "Alluvium" then you are ahead of the pack already. When Streaming P2P TV takes over (very soon) I think the adoption will be fast and thorough!
I was the "internet radio intern" at ACTLab TV where a few of my coder friends have been working on software that I believe will change the world. Open source!!!
http://www.actlab.tv/technology.htm
Slashdot-R-US!!
Hi Robert,
This topic makes a lot of sense, and you can address both the technology adoption and the interface itself (some of them vary greatly).
Tonya
Good idea Naveed, game consoles and games are inextricably linked for a number of reasons.
I want to discuss the Sega Dreamcast. The innovation was really in the technology (such as online gaming built in), it was superior to any of the current systems such as the Sony Playstation of the Nintendo 64. The key reason for the failure was its poor relationship with game developers, because of past consoles. And without games, there is no game console no matter how good the hardware.
I am not totally sold on talking about the Sega Dreamcast. What about doing research on Flash? Basically evolution of Flash technology from what it used to be – primarily an animation tool presenting minimal information (http://www.thefwa.com/flash10/gabo.html), into what it is capable of now - something that can organize and display complex information and visuals (http://www.leoburnett.ca/).
Ok, so this came to me last night, I'm not sure why it didn't hit me before...
I have an old Apple Newton MessagePad, model H1000, from 1993. Essentially the first PDA, though many touted it as more of a palm-top computer.
It recognizes handwriting (not bad for 1993), and has a UI that some consider better than current PDA UIs.
I still use this thing on a daily basis to keep my life organized (and doodle in class)...
So, what about a thing on the history of PDA/Palmtop computers, going back to Newton/Palm/Windows CE, etc etc...