User Interfaces Rapidly Adjusting to Information Overload
People who in the next few years solve big problems in Information Overload are going to be very important, and some of them are going to be UI and UX (user experience) designers.
German ISP T-Online demonstrated a big multi-touch screen right out of Minority Report at the CeBIT conference in Hannover this week (see this and other videos below). Many other designers are working on variations on that theme. Other designers still are aiming to bring game-like interfaces to other data-centric experiences. What would you like to see in interface design?
Giant Touchscreen
Video via a post at the wonderful design blog FreshCreation, the inspiration for this post.
The expectation that something like this will be the interface of the future is pretty widespread, but let's look at some alternatives.
Shadow Play
While that touchscreen looks very cool, it's got its issues too. The video below is from the University of British Columbia and points out some of those issues. I'm not sure if the shadow pointing option is going to work in very many circumstances outside of a classroom.
Via one of the researchers' comments at FreshCreation. See also this version at a home computer.
Just Like Your Real Life Mess
That last video might seem a bit dorky but at least you can imagine some good uses of such an approach. The other end of the spectrum, stunning but a challenge to imagine really using, is BumpTop - a prelaunched, much hyped 3D desktop thing.
Thought Control
The keyboard and mouse may end up looking like sad relics from a time in history when only a fraction of human capacity to manipulate information was leveraged. Hopefully that won't mean internet brain implants, but for some people it probably will. The following video goes in the "no thanks" column for me. It's called Brainloop and it's from Austria.
Via FreshCreation again.
How About Something More Familiar
One of the reasons we're excited about the launch of Adobe's AIR platform and in Rich Internet Applications in general is their potential for powerful, beautiful new interfaces. It's a lot more accessible for larger numbers of developers than any of the above ever will be. Innovation on AIR in new Twitter clients alone is a fun field to watch.
AIR, Flex and the forthcoming Thermo join Photoshop to make up the newest suite of Adobe tools for interface design. Check out the following video demonstration of the AIR and Flex at work on a Sony Ericsson website. The demo is from Raghunath Rao of Adobe in Bangalore, India.
Throw that onto a touchscreen interface, make it all bigger, and then we're really talking.
2D/3D Gaming
You know what I really want? I want a web experience like the soon-to-launch game Fez. Check out this video, it gets particularly interesting at :30.
Via gaming megablog Kotaku
I want my RSS reader to work like that. Combine some hand motion/touchscreen with some AIR/Flex/Thermo action with some 2D/3D viewing of related documents and I'm going to be in heaven. Make that song in the Fez demo play all the time, too.
Conclusion
Always-on access, the proliferation of publishers, content syndication and an inevitable shift in advertising dollars are all forces contributing to a growing demand for better interfaces. The iPhone's multi-touch interface is also moving things heavily in that direction, which may or may not be good for the web at large.
Other efforts to tackle the same problems include better filtering systems or recommendation engines. Those will make some sense in some cases but day in and day out, we need new interfaces to deal with the explosion of information underway. How do you want to interact with a world drowning in data?
(Maybe all of this is silly and the image below is all we need to know!)
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I have been thinking about this a lot over the past couple of years on the short flights on the East Coast where people next to me sit with huge binders with how to use applications on their way to or front training on tools that have horribly complex and unclear interfaces. Oddly, big business thinks they get value from tools that require days of training and huge binders.
Occasionally I talk with companies that are really happy they can train their people on how to use their new tools with 2 or 3 1 or 2 minute videos. The rest is really easy to sort out from there.
Loving CeBIT! BUT, Hating Germany!
I'm over here in Handover, Germany at the CeBIT Tech Show, I tell ya what, these people love me!
I keynoted today and it went over quite well. I just did my old "Save the Planet, Go Green" bit and they were eating out of my hand. I wowed 'em with one-liners like:
"When you look at non-travel power consumption in the world today perhaps PCs and IT are the most rapidly growing power consumers on the planet ..."
"We think we have a real responsibility ... to reduce power consumption by the IT industry,"
Next I did the old "fifth Dimension" on 'em:
"Over time, interacting with computers will be more and more like interacting with people. We'll still use keyboard and a mouse when it's most efficient. But at other times, you'll tell your device what you want it to do, or simply use a wave of your hand,"
I then waved my hand and all of the lights went off in the auditorium! I wave it again and they all came back on!
(Just as bribed the lighting director to do). Them crowd went ouuuuuu - ahhhhhh!
I then walked off stage (not waving).
As I went to my dressing room, I heard them saying,
"Ouuu Ahhh, dast heir Ballma hasten gotten der powwah! yah, yah!"
Dang these people are easy!
btw: I have taken over to top two floors of Raffles Vier Jahreszeiten — Hamburg, Germany, all curtains are drawn! I'll just pretend I'm back in Redmond for the next four days, because I HATE GERMANY!
I would like to add WPF, which is also great to build powerful, beautiful new interfaces. You can check this video http://www.sobees.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=41&Itemid=9 for an example.
Francois, thanks - I was trying to think of a good Windows example. A prelaunched RSS reader built on WPF is a pretty good one! ;)
FYI, links to YouTube videos are broken.
E.g.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v/Ybf_IKV5Xxk
should be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybf_IKV5Xxk
Posted by: metropol.myopenid.com
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March 12, 2008 11:27 PM
the direction for handling information overload is totally the opposite of what you think, or what the tech world thinks
it is within, in consciousness, where the real "filter" resides
attention directed inwards results in the perfect assimilation of exactly what is needed at any time, for any purpose
all "content" really is, is access to possibilities and the objectification of subject in such a way as to present to the inner self the relative "facts" that the self needs to learn or do what it is supposed to do
the most interesting convergence will be between what we unfortunately call "mysticism", and technology; the implications for monetization and the structure of the industry will be profoud, could say more, this is enough...
again, we are only at the beginning
enjoy, gregory
Important topic to address, and nice summary.
I'm a little biased here ;)
Alertle.com's UI and layout is pretty unique and is completely AJAX-driven. A user can read a lot of articles from a lot of feeds at a blistering speed in it. It doesn't tell me how many articles I have NOT read (unlike other feed readers). Keeps my information overload thingy managed. Check out a 2 mt soundless demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztQJ4ec1aWs
The way you solve "information overload" problems is the old-fashioned way: Good Design leveraging best of breed standards.
Thanks for surfacing some fascinating bleeding edge stuff. Loved Bumptop - if you saw my desk you would understand (personally I believe untidy desk = organized mind, but I would have to think that!) And the 3D game i/f was cool. I am actually working on a real UI/UX challenge with some people who are pretty good at this but the challenge is less about people who live online and more about a seamless experience for those who don't - some tasks online, some email, sms, voice, even fax.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_7270000/newsid_7279700/7279762.stm?bw=bb&mp=wm&asb=1&news=1&bbcws=1
http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_7270000/newsid_7279700/7279762.stm?bw=bb&mp=wm&asb=1&news=1&bbcws=1
Another video from CeBIT. Multi-Touch from NextWindow