"Interface-Free" Touch Screen at TED 194
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."
Interface-free? (Score:5, Insightful)
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If it's useless; although you can still load it up with chrome and tailfins if you'd like.
KFG
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Exactly, you can't have an interface free interface, we are interfacing with the world. Want some really mind blowing interface design work check out Jeff Raskin's The Humane Interface [amazon.com] Go back to the fundamentals of how humans interact with the world, find where we retain the most information, are the fastest to react, what gives us higher error rates, etc and redisign computer interfaces. Imagine an OS without applications or files. That's what he outlines. This is just another input device.
Even if
Re:Interface-free? (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole "Why shouldn't my computer take three nanoseconds to turn on, read my mind, and then never ever have errors!!!?!?one1" thing is a very amateur approach to the problem, if you ask me. Sure, it would be nice, but I'm absolutely sure it's technically impossible.
To be more specific:
"There has never been any technical reason for a computer to take more than a few seconds to begin operation when it is turned on."
I can name half a dozen; power consumption for suspend to RAM, system process cleanup for suspend to disk, disk space storage for suspend to disk, driver software that doesn't gracefully handle failing down to a hibernate state, plug-and-play hardware detection on bootup... not to mention the whole raft of problems that occur when users never shut down and clog their system up by never ending processes.
The problem with the view he espouses is that it practically requires a suspend-state, when users aren't good with suspend states. It wasn't until Windows XP and the relatively modern (last three or four years) (okay don't flame me I'm sure SOMEWHERE there was a build that had really optimal suspend, but I couldn't find it) linux systems that suspend really started working, and even so, your device drivers really depend on when you can suspend the system and how it restores.
For example, when I tested Vista on my laptop, the base sound driver would for some reason kill the audio after restore from suspend. It just wouldn't make any noise until it rebooted. When I upgraded the driver, it went away.
It is, in fact, only recently that we have had flashmem and the concept of keeping your 'bootfiles' on a seperate flash partition to read from for a quick boot has been a realistic and close to mainstream idea for the desktop.
The same thing comes up here.
"Why should you have to double-click anything? What does Ctrl+D mean one thing in one program and a completely different thing in another? And what's the point of the Yes/No confirmation if the user is in the habit of clicking Yes without thinking about it?"
All of those things make sense in the context they are being used in, and they're relatively intuitive. After all, it's not the programmers fault the user is an idiot, especially with something as simple as a yes/no dialog box, as long as the dialog box is written in language comprehensible for the designed userbase.
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It's CYA. If there was no yes/no dialog after something like "Do you really want to format your hard drive?" you can bet that the number of end users accidentally formatting their hard drive would skyrocket, and that there would be some attempt at a class action lawsuit against the developer of the (not free-as-in-beer) OS for malpractice or some such thing. If you have seen this dialog
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But Macintosh already does it the way you suggest:
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GNOME did invert some years ago the order of the buttons on right-to-left languages, following the example of the Apple UI, and uses verbs instead of the infamous YNC combo; so, no: "linux" does not do like windows.
and just to be overly zealous: windows vista added message boxes with verbs+descriptions, so neither does newer releases of windows do like the old times (finally).
Re:impossible? (Score:2)
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I think that we could do or try for 1 - 10 second boot times, but it would involve "cheating." It would have to be a suspend state with something like a flash boot drive just so computer instant ons to it's previous state. You need to give the
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I've wondered about this, specifically how to isolate "stale" state (things like network buffers that refer to sessions that are no longer active), and if it's possible to lazy-initialize/restart hardware. You could certainly bring the system back up using a memory snapshot, but you'll al
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But most 'bugs' are not coding bugs. They're user-error bugs. Spyware, for example, is not a coding bug, (most of the time)- it's a user bug. Remember that old programing adage, GIGO? Garbage In, Garbage Out?
The reason why computers have such a bad reputation is because there's so much user-garbage going in that we can't help but have garbage coming out.
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Sometimes, you need people who know nothing of limitations of technology to design them. Of course you end up often re-inventing the wheel and wasting a lot of VC cash if done poorly... BUT!!!
If done correctly and with the correct amount of "N
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If I recall correctly, my Apple II turned on in about a second and had a command prompt where I could write such useful programs as:
10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
20 GOTO 10
RUN
You couldn't save anything to disk or do more useful functions, but the computer started and had a usable shell. Today, you turn on a PC without a usable disk and you get some beeps... I think so
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I can name half a dozen; power consumption for suspend to RAM, system process cleanup for suspend to disk, disk space storage for suspend to disk, driver software that doesn't gracefully handle failing down to a hibernate state, plug-and-play hardware detection on bootup... not to mention the whole raft of problems that occur when users never shut down and clog their system up b
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Wow, you focused on the one point I expanded on as recently becoming possible FOR THE MAINSTREAM and decried how possible it actually was. I even expanded on this- you're
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Though I get your point, the implication is that it's gesture based instead of requiring on-screen input. It's a misappropriate use of the term, but the idea is effectively communicated.
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'cos, seriously... that was REALLY cool.
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It's also why I'll never eat at a place that has a sign that says "Fresh" Seafood, or the like.
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I think I can help [ie7.com] you [mozilla.org]. Well, in most situations, anyway... hehe.
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 u
Shown on CommandN (Score:2)
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This is a very interesting set up (Score:3, Interesting)
Just think how easy all those dramatic situations would have been in the 24th century if the Starship enterprise had some of these!
Re:This is a very interesting set up (Score:4, Insightful)
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Another ten years after that, ahhh!!!
Hand me a doughnut while I work on this would ya? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hand me a doughnut... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hand me a doughnut while I work on this would y (Score:2)
Ever cleaned your monitor? It usually involves a cloth and a spray bottle, and takes a few seconds.
I'd much rather have to clean my monitor than my keyboard.
Re:Hand me a doughnut while I work on this would y (Score:2)
So does it get dirty? Yep... after a couple of weeks of use it gets a pretty good film on it. Is it bothersome? Nope. Unless you are looking for it you really can't tell... it's actually the texture that let's me know when it's dirty (it's not quite as slick to write on). I just carry som
Re:Hand me a doughnut while I work on this would y (Score:2)
Old story, and no such thing as 'no interface' (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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That said, "no interface" is a figure of speech. Technically, every tool we use has an "interface" of some sort. For example, the interface for a pencil is arguably the wood stalk that's intended to reside in your hand.
By "no interface" we're really talking about interfaces that are intuitive and reference more natural metaphors of interactivity.
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So we do learn how
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In particular we can see the zooming (into maps, etc) gestures in the patent imagery. http://hrmpf.com/wordpress/48/new-apple-patents/ [hrmpf.com] Although these ideas are not too-new, the related apple patents date as far back as Jan 2005 (through to Oct 06)
outstanding (Score:2)
This year != recently (Score:2)
Oh for fucks sake (Score:4, Insightful)
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)
about RSI and ergonomics... (Score:2, Interesting)
I swear, if this were from a business selling some new product, I'd say they were trying to boost sales. But he's a researcher. I guess they must b
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Cut him some slack.
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Just because you lack vision, don't assume everyone else is just as blind.
This would provide a great addition for editing video, audio or image collections. I've just scanned in over a hundred images related to genealogy and this could provide an excellent and FAST interface for sorting them. Combine it with audio annotation and decent voice recognition (dictation) and it would save me weeks of work.
My kids take tons of photos, and or
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Re:Look into the future. Other video here (Score:2)
Yes, it's neat. Hey, we are geeks so that's the point!
If you want to see some applications that can benefit from it immediately, check out this video [google.com] that shows both Google Earth and Warcraft III being run using this multi touch interface combined with voice recognition.
I've been using a multi touch interface for over a year now via my PowerBook's touchpad and iScroll2 [sourceforge.net]. Let me tell you that panning around ap
mmm :/ (Score:2)
Well it makes for a great demo but I notice he didn't actually manipulate any information there, just graphics.
What I'd be really interested in is seeing some kind of email or office app done this way. I suspect it's much harder to apply these techniques to very data-heavy displays or data based around language rather than graphics. That's not to say it's a bad idea - multi-touch will probably arrive on our desktops at some point, but I see it as being a supplement to what we have now rather than replacin
Not quite "interface free"... (Score:2)
Minority report??? (Score:4, Insightful)
This type of interface was also in The first $20 millions is the hardest. [imdb.com] But that came out in the same year as The Minority report.
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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.
Thanks for clearing that up. I guess this is why the call it "news for nerds."
The Pentagon already bought this,,, (Score:3, Interesting)
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http://www.military.com/soldiertech/0,14632,Soldi
http://www.esri.com/library/fliers/pdfs/cs-northr
Neat, but doesn't look useful (Score:2)
Good idea for real 3D work. Maybe 2D. (Score:2)
This is good. One of the major problems with graphic design systems, both CAD and animation, is that it's only possible to select one thing at a time. Many operations involve two objects, and you're forced to some sequential select-and-manipulate interface. This gets you past that.
Many high-end animation systems will accept multiple input devices, from MIDI keyboards to knob boxes to articulated skeletons. At the low end, we have the scroll wheel, which was a big improvement. Finally, you could do tw
Video slas[...buffering..]hdot[...buffering..]ted! (Score:2)
Neat demo. Needs Mandelbrot. (Score:3, Interesting)
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The GUI (Score:3, Insightful)
Also see this video too (Score:2)
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Its a piece of glass that has the image back projected.
If you have a projector, you're already good.
The interesting part of this is the multiple detection points.
There are a few of ways to do this most of which involve stress deformation of a laser beam through the glass.
Wake me up when he stops having to touch a flat surface.
No interface? (Score:2)
"They should have one in the google lobby" (Score:2)
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Really? The first thing I thought when seeing it was that this would be perfect for things like Visio or other diagram editors, but also for moving text and images around in presentation apps like Powerpoint. It would also be a great interface for doing things like cut and paste, or for changing text sizes etc.
The uses may not be huge in all kinds of apps, just the same way as mouse usage varies, but they might mean pr
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On other note, pressure sensitive displays are prone to wear, since one has to flex material in places. So displays have to be cheap to warrant replacing them now and then for low cos
Interfaces are natural (Score:4, Interesting)
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"
Keyboard (Score:3, Interesting)
Bring on the screens. (Score:2)
I don't think it would take much effort at all before you'd rarely have to actually look down and see what you were doing.
I also think that we'd have to keep an interface, but it could be more like OS X's menu (Or like how he changed things in world wind).
You would still need to have menus for some things, but for the most part you could remove a lot of the menus.
I also liked the idea of
been there (Score:2)
I think
kinda price (Score:2)
Again?! (Score:2)
Other ideas... (Score:2)
heat (Score:2)
of the lava lamp adds heat? It doesn't in real life.
The real significance of this (Score:2)
When I first developed, but didn't patent, the graphical point of sale software paradigm in the mid 80's I began a fifteen-year effort to travel the world and show it to thousands upon thousands of people. As a result, none of the aspects of the graphical POS software user interface coul
Vid Warning Please! (Score:2)
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Anyway, man, here's the YouTube video [youtube.com] which I was able to watch (also running Linux with an older Flash version).
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Re:Windows only thanks to Flash requirement (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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I have a piece of software called SwishVideo2 which takes video and creates flash movies. They realised that Flash 9 broke all the movies that their product created (when viewed using Flash 8 and earlier) so they issued a patch [swishzone.com] that allowed Flash 8 and earlier to view their Flash 9 compatible movies. Why should everybody have to redo all their work just so Macrodobe can charge a new fee ?
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You can't complain at people because your choice of OS is missing software to view their files. I have this new idea of picking the tools you need, then installing the OS required to use them. On my servers, firewall, media machine, I run linux. On my laptop I use for browsing+work, I use windows. In each case, I picked the best tools for the job.
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Really, "interface" was not the right word at all. The touchscreen and gestures are the interface. The word he was looking for was "widgets" or specifically "scrollbars".
Additionally while it was neat, it's not suited for everything. It would work great for playing with Xgl or graphical things, but it's not going to help much when writing code, papers, spreadsheets, and generally all the things most people do most of the day.
As for RSI, he doesn't seem to be much of an ergonomics expert... typing on
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I'm not sure about this. In the photo library application demo, he brought up a keyboard with his hands, typed out a label for a photo, and put it away, in fewer than 10 seconds.
It seems pretty widely adaptable and convenient, especially if we can make
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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 wa
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The only reason I brought it up was to show that a touchscreen-only interface wouldn't end typing efficiency by removing the keyboard, and thus this touchscreen system would still be useful and efficient in productive tasks because oyu still have access to a virtual keyboard.
What I'm saying is that while this is neat for quick applications that don't require much text, it would be painf
ohhhhh yeahhhhhh (Score:2)
I'm not sure, but I can tell you what *my* hands were touching during that 9min 23s video.
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Is anyone else reminded of the battle-sch
Re:People who work with CAD and GIS will start cry (Score:2)
Re:People who work with CAD and GIS will start cry (Score:2)
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It's still cool though, and I'd certainly like to play with this (I assume I won't have enough money to buy one for the next 10 years).
Stylus anyone? n/t (Score:2)
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Producing them, you mean?
Look up "Gorilla Arm Syndrome" if you need a refresher why this and similar approaches have always failed.
Regards,
--
*Art
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