KATIE CERAR

A TED Talk given by Tom Underkoffler showcases the Sixth-Sense interface. As Tom and co. designed the interfaces seen in Minority Report, much of this will seem very familiar.

Essentially, he believes that the manipulation of 3d data using 3d gestures is the future of the computer interface. Do I agree? I’m not sure.

Perhaps one of the more confusing aspects of this video is that it demonstrates some cool looking toy problems, but doesn’t really give me a sense for how this might be used in the real world. Certainly the real world, and much of our brains, operates in 3d. But the data and information that we most commonly manipulate isn’t really 3d. My papers and projects aren’t really in 3d. How would this system make the work I’ve been doing over the past few days (writing a paper) any easier? He used the interface to easily navigate through 3d data to pick out an image that looked interesting or exciting. This sounds great when you aren’t sure what you’re looking for, and what you’re looking for is visual. But a lot of what we do is text-based, and much of the time we know exactly what we’re looking for. A human searching for something visually is going to be much slower than a computer searching based on a search term. He says that the companies who need to wade through a lot of data would benefit from this as early adopters, but a lot of text or numerical data seems unwieldy.

On the other hand, I could see great uses in those fields where people actually do have 3d data. CAD drawings, physical design, architecture. Anything that we have forced into a 2d plane so that it could fit on a computer screen.

I think it’s an interesting idea, and Tom has wild aspirations for this technology. But ultimately, I think that assuming our world should be entirely 3d manipulatable is a bit of a jump. Perhaps much of what we do is 2d because we have been forced their by existing technology, but I’m not sold.

Many of us spend lots of time critiquing, but we don’t always notice what works so well that we forget it’s there. There are many interfaces and information displays that we use on a daily basis that we take for granted.

What made me think of this? Last night I was watching the NHL playoff game on CBC, and something was terribly amiss. For the first period the clock in the overlay was in a weird font, the borders weren’t lining up properly, and there was no power play indicator or timer! Is it sad that I can’t quite figure out if a team is on the power play without some kind of red timer at the top of my TV screen? Possibly. (Or possibly my team needs to have a more dominant power play, but that’s a different matter!) Either way, I don’t think I ever realized how much I have come to rely on that information display to help me understand and enjoy a hockey game.

So that, coupled with the terrible Reddit downtime yesterday, made me consider how reliant I am on some technologies, and how lost I’d be without them. Perhaps that’s one of the hallmarks of a good technology: no one notices how amazing it is until it stops working. Makes me wonder, does gmail go down every once in a while just to remind me how much I need it? Hmmm…

I ran across this TED talk the other day, and was quite amazed. Nicholas Negroponte (of the One Laptop Per Child program and the MIT Media Lab) spoke of where he thought technology was headed. He was surprisingly accurate  about a number of different predictions, but I was specifically enthralled with his description of touch as an input medium, and the great potential that there is for gestures and pressure sensitive input with touch.

He also makes a point to talk about what is wrong with the mouse, in his mind. Specifically that to use a mouse you have to stop, find the mouse, grab the mouse, wiggle the mouse to move the cursor, find the cursor on the screen, and then move it. We still perform all of those actions now, but we are certainly far less aware of those actions (when’s the last time you noticed performing all of those steps?).

I also wonder – how seriously did people take him at that time? Did this all seem completely insane and far-fetched?

Well, another successful IxDA Waterloo / User Experience Group session has come and gone. This time, we participated in a UX Show and Tell, where we were able to catch a glimpse into the work of other UX professionals in the area. Aside from the interesting projects (and great inspiration for wireframing!), I also learned a lot about distraction in the workplace. I’m currently working on a paper for a Qualitative Methods course (in sociology) where I studied different collaborative groups and the effect that technology had on their collaboration. One of the major themes that I saw recurring (and we all know this is true!) was the problem of distraction. Specifically, distraction that was initiated and supported by technology.

My question was: how can we, as designers, help people stay focused when they want/need to?

Some extremely interesting ideas came up in the ensuing discussion, and I wanted to highlight some of my favourite ones.

1. Big Brother(s)

I observed that people whose screens were visible to their group members didn’t spend so much time being distracted as those who had completely private screens. Is this because of the social pressure to stay on track? The group thought that a great way to mimic this would be to have our screens visible to other people in the workplace at any moment in time. It would probably be best if you could pick who would see your screen (since my boss looking at my screen might make me more stressed than anything else). I recall a study by McEwan and Greenberg (2005) in which they created a collaborative system that incorporated a video feed of the work spaces of each team member. An interesting system, but they found that people very often adjusted their viewing angles so that their screens were not visible. Would we be willing to let other people view our screens at any time?

2. Time Based Restrictions

The idea came up that we could put restrictions on the amount of time that we can spend in distraction areas (such as online, or on a certain website). I have a feeling that for those of us that are expert procrastinators, that would just drive us to distract ourselves elsewhere. But I have heard of many people that employ this system with their email accounts to help them manage the distraction that comes from the never-ending incoming stream of emails that many of us receive.
Perhaps we could also just block these distracting sites for good. I guess someone else had this idea, since there is a firefox plugin for it called LeechBlock, although you could probably just put it in a parental filter.

3. Tracking

Is distraction simply about awareness? I know from experience that sometimes a simple “wow you’ve been on there awhile…” can get me back on track. I guess we don’t always realize how long we’ve been distracting ourselves. Software that tracks time spent in different applications and on specific sites could give us some input into how long we’re spending and bring it into our awareness.