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Input Devices Programming IT Technology

What Will The Future Desktop Interface Look Like? 339

Posted by Zonk from the minority-report-reporting-in-sir dept.
b O b 1 9 19 A writes "The TechZone has an interesting article wondering where computer interfaces are going. They discuss some alternatives to the traditional desktop, and propose a framework in which future interface designs may be evaluated. From the article: 'The next 10 years will be a transitional phase for interface design. 3D rendering technologies already have a stable home in the entertainment, video game, simulation, and design sectors. Although 2D interfaces have dominated everything else, I expect we will start seeing more 3D incursions. Operating systems and applications are beginning to capitalize on what 3D has to offer. The precise nature of how and where 3D can best be incorporated is an open question, and a framework to evaluate these questions seems appropriate.'" Big-time ad alert. Set your ad and flashblockers to stun.
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What Will The Future Desktop Interface Look Like? More

What Will The Future Desktop Interface Look Like?

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  • Whatever works best with the... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by arrrrg ( 902404 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @11:37PM (#14277882)
    device that lets you move onscreen objects by just thinking about it. We can do a brain-controled 2-d cursor easily now, better stuff will be on the way soon.

    • Re:Whatever works best with the... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Baddas ( 243852 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @11:43PM (#14277906) Homepage
      I think this is the key to future interface design: Not the virtual representation, so much as the interface devices. As long as we're restricted to a 2d mouse and a set of binary keys, the different metaphors for the software are moot.

      Assuming we get something with positioning in all the dimensions of space (or at least, more than two degrees of freedom of mice) then you can start having interfaces which utilize those spaces.

      Of course, right now we navigate 3d spaces in video games fairly effectively, but it's a full-concentration task, using both hands. Which is not exactly ideal for something you multitask in, perhaps? As well as containing the restrictions of a physical 3d world such as gravity etc. Perhaps descent would be a better model.

      Just my thoughts off the cuff

      • Absolutely, positively the wrong metaphor. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by shmlco ( 594907 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @02:16AM (#14278372) Homepage
        Flat screens of documents are just fine. We just need smarter organizational and retrieval tools.

        3D? Okay, visualize trying to find a real piece of paper in a box in a 20,000 SQFT warehourse. Now, if you want to wander around a virtual 3D space doing the same thing like a rat in a maze looking for the cheese, feel free.

        So, to my mind, 3D organizational spaces are the wrong direction. Spotlight and Google Desktop are the first steps in the right direction. Why should I have to organize my work and documents into trees of folders and project hierarchies? Why add keywords when the computer should understand context? Shouldn't the computer be able to do that kind of scut work?

        Picture the perfect assistant. "Donna, find that claims letter I sent to Bob last week... no... no... yeah that one. Scroll down... down... okay. It's approved. Attach the current spreadsheet and forward it to Dave. Oh, and let me know if he has any changes."

        Now, picture "Donna" as your automated, computerized, super-assistant, with whom you can communicate by voice from anywhere, anytime.

        Live with a program like Spotlight for a while, and you start to find yourself bypassing the Finder and Desktop and folders altogether. What's needed is a better way to communicate (voice), and a system smart enough to know who Bob is, who Dave is, what a claims letter is, understands "last week" as a variable period, and can put it all together.

        Yeah, it's the Star Trek interface.

        • Ah, all that would be well and good. But what if the computer recognized that by "last week" it might include a couple days before or after the seven day period ending on the previous Saturday, particularly if there were no claims letters sent to Bob or Robert or Rob strictly "last week". And by "current spreadsheet", you don't mean the excel document you have open, but the up-to-date sheet of claims information your company has on record. Though when you refer to the "current spreadsheet" in 5 minutes,

        • Re:Absolutely, positively the wrong metaphor. (Score:4, Interesting)

          by jacksonj04 ( 800021 ) <nick@nickjackson.me> on Saturday December 17, 2005 @06:58AM (#14279055) Homepage
          I know this is suicide on slashdot, but take a look at the WinFS PDC demo [msdn.com].
        • Have you ever held a speech for 8 hours in a row? You don't want to do that. Believe me.

          Okay, we can say that what we need is something that *fast* in usage. There are only a few "interfaces" of you body that are on a thing you could call the "fast lane" we humans have in our brains. These are mainly the hands and the speech system (mouth and throat muscles).

          So those two interfaces make sense, but using speech only makes sense if you use all informations avaliable, meaning mood/emotions and the subtile "mea

      • Re:Whatever works best with the... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rpdillon ( 715137 ) * on Saturday December 17, 2005 @04:03AM (#14278678) Homepage
        I'm not sure I agree with this. In games (and movies) there is a natural tendency to move towards an illusion of 3 dimensions because the goal of those media is immersion: to make you feel as if you are "there". 3D is a natural way to go, since we tend to perceive the world in 3D. Of course, it is an unnatural act, because we choose to display those immersive environments on a 2D screen, so we naturally experience some sheer during transition.

        But, with a computer operating environement, I simply don't see the attraction. The environment of a computer is not in the business of being immersive, or distracting you from reality. It is in the business of making information available to you as quickly and accurately as possible. This goal does not particularly lend itself to 3D - as long as we have had langauge, it has always been expressed in 2D, whether it be carved or painted on walls of caves, chiseled into stone, brushed onto papyrus, or printed on newsprint. Even now, as I type this, I do so onto a 2D digital "paper" that is my LCD monitor. Would 3D lend any additional utility? I can't think of any.

        I attended JavaOne last May and went to a session on Looking Glass, Sun's 3D desktop environment. As much as it was attractive, it didn't really add a whole lot to everyday tasks. Sure, they could represent a filesystem in 3D, but it wasn't really any more efficient than midnight commander. You can "fold" away windows to the side of the display, rotating them back into the monitor to get them "out of the way", but it essentially boils down to window shading, only horizontally, rather than vertically.

        Of course, there are exceptions. Sun demonstrated a music program where you could add instruments to a song as tracks, and control their volume and balance by moving them in 3D in relation to your real life speakers. To make something softer, you could move it further "into" the monitor. To make it only audible on the left speaker, you could move it to the left side of the screen. Quite novel, but certainly not an application that necessitates a 3D "desktop" environment. It could just as well be run as a standalone program in Windows, Linux, or Mac as they are today.

        So while I agree that if we were to have a 3D desktop, it would be nice to have a 3D input device, neither seem to add much utility. Personally, I'm stunned that the multi-desktop (virtual desktop) navigation system hasn't made more inroads. I'm addicted to it in KDE, and Windows' powertool feels like a cheap hack by comparison. I'm stunned that neither Windows nor Mac come with it by default. Mac uses Expose, which strikes me as a complex work around to achieve a similar effect. In the future, I think we'll use other subtle advancements like virtual desktops to extend the functionaility of the user interface in ways that allow us to *organize* the information as we access and use it, rather than displaying it in some drastically different way, like a 3D desktop.
    • This goes along the lines of what you said. We'll only see 3D desktops when the peripherals for such software goes mainstream. While people are still using their regular mice or wacoms [wacom.com], demand or a need for standard 2D desktops and software will be high. Get the hardware out there and known to people, and eventually developers will start coding for such hardware.
    • Should be pretty awesome to play Duke Nukem Forever® with a "device that lets you move onscreen objects by just thinking about it."

      And yes, we know the game has taken a long time. There's no possible joke you could make about the game's development time that we haven't already heard. :)
      http://www.3drealms.com/duke4/ [3drealms.com]

    • Re:Whatever works best with the... (Score:5, Funny)

      by lotrtrotk ( 853897 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @12:26AM (#14278039)
      Yess!! Soon I'll be able to browse for pr0n hands free =D
    • So hypochondriacs really will have virii, and UNIX elitists really will run the worlds fastest most reliable awesome number-crunchy stuff on all hardware from their 386SX to their ub3r power server. I can see a market here. Ego == OS. Most /.ers will run the most amazing machines on Earth!

      Of course, then again, that also means that AOL, Microsoft, and Amazon really will be all that. And Sony will have the perfect DRM. PLEASE KEEP ALL THOUGHTS AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER. YOU ARE TOO PENSIVE NEAR THE COMPU
    • Actually I think there will be several levels of user interface depending on the needs and abilities of the user. There will continue to be very basic, ATM-like interfaces for specific and focussed applications such as a touchscreen map kiosk for tourists. Keyboards aren't going away any time soon, either. But the really cool stuff will come out of games and military tech and will further revolutionize how we learn and communicate.

      Helmets with surround sound and surround video will probably get popular a

  • 4D (Score:3, Funny)

    by lightknight ( 213164 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @11:37PM (#14277886) Homepage
    Muhahaha. I plan to get a jump on the competition by patenting the 4D interface. It's like a 3D interface, but better ;). I'll show Eolas how it's done (by spanking MS for even more money).

    But in all seriousness, I am working on the 4D metaphor. I have a prototype I've been working on up on my website, just haven't had the time to finish it.

    Cheers

    • Re:4D (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Ruff_ilb ( 769396 )
      So what, your fourth dimention is time?

      "OH SHIT, I can't access outlook, I've got to go back in time!"

      But seriously though - look a few posts down - the person found some serious gripes with a 3d interface. Here are mine:

      Ok, a 2d interface is immediately intuitive. 2D screen, 2D Mousepad, 2D interface. Simple. But with a 3+D interface, we lose intuitive-ness (and therefore efficiency) in the name of a more advanced system. Some people navigate quite well in 3D, sure, but try handing a copy of blender (or an

      • Re:4D (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Doctor Faustus ( 127273 )
        How about an interface that is basically 2D, but instead of drilling down, you drill forward? Imagine tracing code in an IDE, and instead of a procedure call just jumping to the other location, your view moves forward through the old routine's code into the new. If you want to see where you came from for context, just back up a little.

      • Re:4D (Score:2, Insightful)

        by l00k ( 910333 )

        Some people navigate quite well in 3D, sure, but try handing a copy of blender (or any other modeling software) to someone and get them to navigate in 3D

        the problem is, as you pointed out, that for most people their main means of navigation around a graphical interface is with their mouse on a two-dimensional surface. this translation of 2D movement to 3D interface is what can be counter-intuitive, not the hypothetical 3D interface itself.

        let me put it to you this way, we navigate constantly in the rea

    • Umm, most unix people DO operate in 4D already. 2D graphical workspace, one depth dimension and one dimension of virtual desktop spaces.

      OTOH your project shold be damned fucking funny. Although from the screen shots I have no inkling of idea how its 4D.

  • Hopefully in the future I'll still be able to say (Score:5, Funny)

    by CptPicard ( 680154 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @11:42PM (#14277899)
    It's a UNIX system! I know this!

  • 3D not that useful (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bogtha ( 906264 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @11:42PM (#14277902)

    Current interfaces aren't 2D, they are 2.5D. There is a z-axis, it's just less immediately obvious than the x and y axes. Ever put one window on top of another? Yep, that's depth.

    The reason why 3D interfaces aren't really that useful is that you really need a 3D input device to make use of it. But the trouble is, the way our bodies are built, it's very tiring to wave our hands around all day long. At least with a 2.5D interface, our hands are resting on something.

    The other problem is that the value 3D provides over 2.5D is very small. What does it actually get us? We can already put things behind and in front of each other. We can already zoom in and out of structures. We can't rotate well - but that's not something that I think stops useful things from happening.

    What we need aren't 3D interfaces, what we need are smarter interfaces. Not necessarily natural language processing, but simple stuff that works and is practical. Tab completion in UNIX shells is a good example. Intellisense in IDEs is another. Clippy is rumoured to have actually been useful in the lab, before it was hobbled for desktop computers. Spotlight is making things easier to find.

    These are the kinds of interface enhancements that will be of most use, and they can come along piece-by-piece without anybody noticing, without needing new hardware, and without users being forced into a new paradigm.

    • From the article: The desktop UI is successful for a reason, not simply because it has a familiar analogue in the physical world, but rather because it behaves in that same useful way that real desks behave. It takes advantage of a well-established ability; spatial memory. You put something down and it stays there.

      Males tend to be better at spatial memory, while females tend to be better at verbal and communication skills... the 2D interface has been male-centric up till now. Maybe the next step is to ta

      • Maybe the next step is to take a shot at a female-centric interface. Not that anyone on /. would know where to start, of course :)

        This is a good start. [photobucket.com]

      • Males tend to be better at spatial memory, while females tend to be better at verbal and communication skills... the 2D interface has been male-centric up till now. Maybe the next step is to take a shot at a female-centric interface.

        I don't know, I'd say that you need both spacial and word association skills. File->save is spacial and verbal. Maybe it's not English but there are languages that have different word orders. If a recent Science Friday episode is any indicator, there's no biological reason
    • At least with a 2.5D interface, our hands are resting on something.

      An e-book! but FULL size. With REAL e-pages. With true point-and-click interface (stylus) instead of a mouse. Want to switch app? Change pages. With non-volatile memories, you can change the page from your full action game, to your homework.

      You could use the tabs to have "virtual books", so one tab is the desktop, another is the PDF file you were reading, and so on.

      Close the book, and you'll turn off the PC.

      Of course, the book will be JUST a

    • Re:3D not that useful (Score:3, Informative)

      by paul248 ( 536459 )
      Well, really the problem is that human vision is only 2.5D to begin with. In order to have true 3D vision, you would need to have 4D eyes with a 3D retina surface. That would allow you to look at a solid object, and see every point inside it, without any points being "in front of" any others. Trying to see 3D from within a 3D universe is analogical to trying to look at a photograph from the edge; you're trying to remap a 2D space onto a straight line.

      You could probably send true 3D through a direct ne
      • ::MY HEAD ASPLODE::
        seriously, you're reading way too much into that, and no, seeing as our sight comes from three dimensions to two points in 3D space, we do have 3D vision. On a less serious note, your comment reminds me of what happens when you get stuck inside a rock on games.
        • seriously, you're reading way too much into that, and no, seeing as our sight comes from three dimensions to two points in 3D space, we do have 3D vision.

          No, you are failing to understand the concept. We don't have 3D vision. We have 2D vision with depth cueing (AKA 2.5D). Each eye sees a 2D picture. You cannot see the back of someone's head from the front, you can't see south if you're facing north, and the inside of a soccer ball isn't visible unless you cut it open. You are seeing in 2 dimensions. Havi

        • The fact that a TV picture looks "pretty good" is testament to the fact that our vision isn't really 3D. Human vision is basically 2D plus a little bit of extra depth information. If you could actually experience real 3D vision, it would be nothing short of completely f*cking mindblowing.
    • As a GUI designer, I would tend to agree.

      And to add on to what you're saying, humans tend to digest text and documents faster on a 2D surfaces.

      That being said, there are many current and potential applications for 3D interfaces. They're quite useful for medicine and CT threat detection. ... and that being said, I have absolutely no doubt large players will attempt to tack on cool-for-cool's-sake 3d graphics on the operating systems they sell.
    • What does a half dimension look like?

      Yeah, I understand what it means in this context, and I don't fault the parent poster for using it. . . but, at some level it just doesn't make sense. Not sure what a better description would be, though. Perhaps "tiered 2D" or something of the sort?

      Ultimately, the usual windowed computer screen allows the user to make use of a third dimension in almost exactly the same way that a desk with books and papers on it does. The user stacks things up in piles separated in th
      • What does a half dimension look like? Yeah, I understand what it means in this context, and I don't fault the parent poster for using it. . . but, at some level it just doesn't make sense. Not sure what a better description would be, though. Perhaps "tiered 2D" or something of the sort?

        2D with depth cueing. We actually see in 2D, and our brains use analysis of the differential between the two offset images to estimate depth variations. It's more than flat 2D vision, but it's certainly not full 3D (which

    • Re:3D not that useful (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Ugmo ( 36922 )
      The reason why 3D interfaces aren't really that useful is that you really need a 3D input device to make use of it. But the trouble is, the way our bodies are built, it's very tiring to wave our hands around all day long.

      You don't wave your hands around all day ?? You obviously ain't from New Yawk.

      Everyone around here talks with their hands!

      Ya gotta be an idiot not to understand that hand gestures and facial expressions convey a lot of information.

      A while back...was it yesterday??

      No.. no.. no.. further back

  • You know what I think looks cool? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bersl2 ( 689221 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @11:44PM (#14277912) Journal
    This [opencroquet.org] looks cool.

  • Many ideas (Score:4, Insightful)

    by JanneM ( 7445 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @11:44PM (#14277915) Homepage
    There are many, many interface ideas out there; anyone who's attended a SIGCHI or similar conference can attest to just how many, how varied - and how weird - they can be.

    However, it's getting pretty clear that the WIMP stuff we have really is pretty good. We hit upon something which while far from perfect still is reasonable. Other interface ideas need to be substantially better, and without serious flaws, and that is difficult to achieve.

    Having a 3D component is a good example. There is little doubt that it will be used in _some_ form at some point in the future. It is also clear that getting it really right is not easy; so many projects have tried and failed already. When what we have is already pretty good, the bar is very high for mistakes, drawbacks and problems.

    To connect back with some earlier desktop discussions recently, this is exactly why having a multitude of desktops is a good idea - not just two, but ten or more projects, all trying various ideas and directions. Chances are one of them at least will stumble upon a new, better way of doing something; a new, better way that the others then are free to copy and improve on. That is also why it is so important to have more than one toolkit - ultimately you are constrained to what the toolkit allows you to do, and thus you need more than one to take into different directions.

  • 3D Desktop (Score:2, Interesting)

    by owlman17 ( 871857 )
    By then the average desktop will be powerful enough to handle this smoothly. 3D Desktop. http://desk3d.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
    • Interesting, but I personally think it can be done as effectively in 2D with desktop snapshot windows and the ability to slide the desktop down to reveal the one underneath like in Enlightenment 0.16 and probably other places. I think this not becuase it looks better but because it is simpler to get your head around something with two dimensions, for example an array of 3x3 desktops than 3D mapping of six desktops onto a cube - even if you end up with three less desktops in that example.

      I suppose the impo

  • Advantages Of 3D (Score:2, Insightful)

    by jschnell01 ( 824802 )
    Just as was mentioned, 3D interfaces do not add a TON of detail because when it all comes down to it... we can only truely view things on a 2D level. I have experimented with some 3d desktop betas that are floating around the web, and I have not really found anything that gave me any advantage over the traditional interface. Adding screens, and using multiple destktops seems to make the most sens. The true future of desktop interfaces must focus on how we can interact with them. Thought control would be

    • Re:Advantages Of 3D (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Ruff_ilb ( 769396 )
      That's because you're viewing a 3d interface on a 2d screen. If you could project this interface around you (holodeck, anyone?), you'd be able to use it just as well as the 2d one. Humans deal with 3d quite well, obviously, on a daily basis.
      • Yeah, but why would I want to? I mean, I could already write something down on a real piece of paper, walk down the hall, and stick in into one of two dozen filing cabinets. Somehow I doubt a virtual representation of that would be any better than the real thing.

  • But consider this: everything you see in this world is like that. It all gets projected onto our flat retinas. We just have really big brains. A 3D scene is constructed in our mind regardless of whether what we're viewing is on a flat computer monitor or in that nether-world known as real life. In fact, most brains do a decent job of scene construction even with one eye closed. From 2D to 3D. Impressive!

    With journalism like that, I can't wait to read what novel and uniquely interesting insights he'll have

  • Complete Article Summary (if slashdotted) (Score:5, Funny)

    by mybecq ( 131456 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @12:05AM (#14277974)
    Page 1 through 5
    [ A d .. A d . l i n k ]
    [ Ad ] A [ a d s .com ]
    [ AD ] r [slashdot.org]
    [ Ad ] t i c l [ A ]
    [ AD ] e [ AD ][ D ]
    [ Ad ] T e x t [slashdot.org]
    [ AD ] 1,2,3,4,5 [slashdot.org]
    [ A D mediaplex.net ][ AD ]


    PS. My eyes have stopped hurting now.
  • maybe we should replace the steering wheels and pedals of cars with trackballs.

    I've seen far too many of these articles about how much better 3D interfaces are going to be, and no actual explanation of how it will make my work easier. Which is not surprising, because it won't. It's a solution in search of a problem.

  • Here's was I think would be useful (Score:3, Interesting)

    by presidentbeef ( 779674 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @12:09AM (#14277987) Homepage Journal
    A desktop system with easy-to-program (read: the average consumer can do it) widgets and interfaces. Probably with some nice web services integration. People who just need to read email and surf the web only need a couple widgets, maybe a mail checker or something. People who work in offices and do really repetitive tasks have ways of easing that through the widgets (again, very easy to program/setup widgets!).
    I think anything that allows people to really use their computer the way they want would be great. I'm not saying it doesn't already exist, but I mean something where nearly everyone becomes accustomed to using a computer as a configurable tool. Something where all those times people say, "Well, I just want it to do [this]!!", they can easily set it up to do whatever it is.

    Just my thoughts.
    • Having average people "program" is really the way to go. Everyone has a different opinion on how their desktop or application should look/behave. Let them have it there way. To have this idea work there really needs to be a standard in the way in which data is stored (possibily in xml). If data is presented in a standard way a real programmer could make a generic function for one piece of software which the user could then import into another application and have similar features. Code reusability and gener
      • Code reusability and generality is key

        No - because you're still thinking like a computer programmer and not like a computer user. The concept of modular code is totally foreign to the average user. The silver bullet as far as "programming by the masses" is natural language processing and universal data abstraction. Of course, that's a long way off - but if we can ever get a system that understands not just what I'm saying - but what I really MEAN (incorporating context that I don't even directly communic

        • Re:Bingo (Score:3, Insightful)

          by TuringTest ( 533084 )
          Both of you are misleaded, thinking as programmers. The concept of abstraction is totally foreign to the average user (at least when related to task automation). Also average users don't need universal programmability - just "good-enough" one. They would have little use for whole Turing completeness.

          No, the silver bullet are related to direct manipulation [wikipedia.org] (removing abstraction and simplifying input) and programming by example [mit.edu] (again removing abstraction, and simplifying depuration). I should know, I'm a res
    • I agree completely. What's really needed in the GUI world isn't some 3D view of things, but the graphical equivalent of shell scripting.

      That's where 3D might be able to help, by representing programs, their inputs and their outputs with 3D models that could be put together like say... K'Nex. There would only be X types of models, where X is the number of ways a given program can connect to another, but if they were actually color-coded (like the previously mentioned toys) it would become rather easy to pu
    • A desktop system with easy-to-program (read: the average consumer can do it) widgets and interfaces. Probably with some nice web services integration. People who just need to read email and surf the web only need a couple widgets, maybe a mail checker or something. People who work in offices and do really repetitive tasks have ways of easing that through the widgets (again, very easy to program/setup widgets!).

      *cough*OpenDoc*cough*

    • I'm not sure if we're on the same page, but the first thing I thought about after reading your post was John Sculley's (and others, I'm sure) idea of agents that went off on the web and did various things you told them to. I have a ton of little widgets that grab various sets of data off the network, but I often think how nice it would be to have 2 or 3 really smart and flexible ones instead.

  • People! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It said Set your ad and flashblockers to stun.

    Not KILL

  • I remember reading about "where interfaces will be in 5 or 10 years..." I also remember playing with those Apple demos of desktop and browser technologies from '96-'97.

    Where are we now with Windows and Mac OS? Just refinements of what works or doesn't work from 10 years ago. In 2015 we'll be having the same articles and little will have changed.
    • Are you kidding? Or have you never used Mac OS?

      The Mac OS has changed drastically since 10 years ago. Except for the menus being on top, the desktop icons being on the right, and the resize corner being in the lower right, the Mac OS interface of today looks completely different than the Mac OS of 10 years ago.

      Within just the past few years, Apple has integrated Dashboard, integrated column browsing from NeXTSTEP, created the dock and improved its functionality, and don't forget Exposé, which is, i

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • like a desktop (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RhettLivingston ( 544140 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @12:14AM (#14278009) Journal
    It is sad that anyone has the vision of people still sitting in front of displays ten years from now. My prescription, switch to glasses with very high resolution across the full field of view but the ability to be transparent too, give the computer multiple cameras placed strategically around the room so that it has a full 3D view, integrate head position detection and a point of view camera into the glasses also, and then create an interface where the computer places virtual objects in your environment in a natural fashion. i.e. Let's read virtual books on our real desk, see the images of people we're talking too remotely as if they are sitting in a chair in our office, have virtual office decorations, have a virtual whiteboard that we can stand in front of and interact with (just a blank space on the wall that the glasses allow us to see as a whiteboard for a while), etc. i.e. augmented reality should be our 10 year vision.

    • People just don't work that way though (Score:5, Insightful)

      by xtal ( 49134 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @01:06AM (#14278156)
      People don't work like that though. Do you think the LASIK industry is predicated on people liking wearing glasses? They do a good job of hiding my broken nose.

      You know what I'd really like? The same interface I have now, on a 30" LCD that costs $1000. Hell, make that three of them. I'm using three 17" LCDs right now and two notebook computers next to me. What does joe sixpack want bad? a 60" plasma TV.

      That I suspect is what the future will bring.

      You want my predictions for 10 years?

      Great big, high resolution displays, and probably several of them.

      A wireless keyboard sitting in front of that display.

      A wireless mouse sitting right next to it.

      Next to that monster display will be a pad of engineering paper, and a pencil.

      A big plasma TV on the wall, perhaps displaying video conferencing.

      No guarantees on where the computer is - probably nowhere to be seen.

      Perhaps a PDA or remote storage device capable of wireless networking.

      That's the future. What's on the screen will probably look very much like what is there now.

      • You have hit upon one of the more sublime elements of the future. A room will have just a wireless keyboard and mouse, and likely a variety of displays. At some point the concept of a monolithic computer system will need a good once over. "The network is the computer"
      • I'm with grandparent on this one.
        Do you know why you sit in front of your computer? Because you have to.

        If you could take your computer with you, say, to the restroom, wouldn't you? (yes, if you're a laptop user with wifi, chances are you've already been there.)

        The trend is toward less wires and more motion. PDAs are an awkward interface for a real need.
        Given a choice, people will want to check slashdot while they're walking down the street, or talking to that boring co-worker.
        I agree people will want more
    • > My prescription, switch to glasses with very high resolution

      Currently, I've heard that virtual reality goggles provides motion sickness: you're head is moving but what you're seeing is not moving --> motion sickness.
      I don't know about you, but I'd hate getting seasick with using a computer.

      So to work, as you said the computer must monitor the head and do it nearly flawlessly before the setup is usable, somehow I don't expect this kind of setup being used.. especially not in 10 years!

      IMHO before swit
  • If you draw a bunch of dots on a piece of paper you will not be able to draw lines joining the dots in all possible configurations unless the lines cross (given some sufficiently large number of dots. I think 5 might do it). However, once you hit three dimensions, all configurations are possible without crossings. Adding a fourth or fifth doesn't have any further beneficial effect.

    The same is true of planes in three dimensione, or cubes (or maybe whatever you'd call an infinite version) in four dimensions.
    • >> Is there some utility to drawing lines that don't cross?

      How can you be so insensitive!. Do you want your lines to be uncomfortably crammed up?

      Please someone think of the lines!
  • What is the deal with eye candy. I think programmers have gotten lazy. It is alot easier to make things zoom in an out in 3d with glass effects, but much harder to come up with unique ways to make interacting with a computer more natural. What we need are smarter applications and interfaces. I want to see multi sensor fusion being incorporated into computers. Imagine a itunes picking a song based on your mood. Computer vision could track facial features and posture. A microphone could monitor your voice and
    • Simple. Because it's easier coming up with new eye candy.

      Also, I'm not sure I'd want my computer reading my mind. I've got enough porn as is, thank you very much.

    • How about redeveloping the keyboard in such a way that there is less keys and have the computer guess what your going to write.

      I hate the way that function is implemented on telephones and intensely dislike the talking paperclip that also attempts to solve that problem. With a very general purpose device that would be hard to implement well without very carefully identifying the context in software.

      The other option is having an user interface to the application that requires very little input - but usually

  • Just look at the Macintosh interface from 4 years ago.

  • Very usable, does nothing, Everyone understands it. Developers consider themselves visionary looking at 0 bugs filed.

  • The tasks performed on a computer. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @12:37AM (#14278068) Journal

    I introduce first to you the humble progress bar. A good progress bar does two things. It shows how far along something is (percentage complete) and it show that activity is taking place and your computer has not just frozen again.

    So in days past when screen were primitive you simply had a row of dots appearing with maybe if your lucky the occasional 5% added to give something like ......5%........10%....

    Add the capabilty for backspace and you usually got a little spinning character made up out of -\|/ to show action taking place. Some more advancement and you got a full bar like 0****5****10****15..| (work with me here this is hard to do in text)

    But then GRAPHICS were added. YEAH. So now you could draw a bar slowly being filled (but for some reason loosing the activity indicator). Color was added and now you could make the bar turn from red to green.

    2.5d add shadow effect to make the bar appear round. 3d and it can stand up like a real seperate bar on your screen.

    And what is the freaking point? Well none. All of them did their work and clearly showed what was happening. Okay they became better looking but it gave no real advantage.

    So are there other tasks that can benefit from better graphics? I think you have the following main type of jobs on a pc.

    1. Finding things. Locating that file you know you have but have not got a quick link to. Either you search for it by entering some params, this does not need more then a text interface. You navigate a file tree for it. text interface like Midnight Commander works perfectly fine. Oh graphics enable nice extras like previews for images but that is useless when I am searching for a mp3 file and the previews for text documents are so small I can't spot the difference. That is leaving aside that the preview options are usually so slow that I can move a thousand times faster in MC then the graphical browsers. 3d benefits? Can't think of any.
    2. Manipulating content. Well unless your trying to edit a 3d content item what is the point? The article already points out that text is best displayed on a 2d service. Now sound manipulation might make sense in 3d, after all stereo sound IS 3D in away so instead of manipulating two 2d waves you could mix them in a 3d wave signal. Never seen this so either it is to hard or it does not offer any benefits. Office/paint/code in 3d? Only as a way to make things extra clear (in the same way that it is easier to code with color highlighting) but no. 2d seems to work fine.
    3. Organizing content. Now we are talking. As the article points out 2d is horribly limiting to make complex relations, anyone who has ever drawn a relationship diagram will have found themselves having to cross lines wich always makes things confusing. Add a 3rd dimension and you never have to cross lines. HOWEVER the huge price you pay for it that you now have to control a 3rd dimension wich seems to make things a lot more difficult. You already need a bloody complex mouse to manipulate a large 2d scene (x-y axis mouse + 2 scroll wheels) a 3d scene is even harder. Every 3d game with a free roving camera proves it.

    Yes I would like a 3d interface when I am manipulating or inspecting the relations between objects on my pc. But is this a common activity? Well I look up at the tabs of my opera browser. Current desktops already have a sort of 2.5d and perhaps my tabs would be clearer if tabs of new pages where "behind" the tabs they originated from. I arrived at this input screen by opening a new tab from the story page (helps me remember where I was when I am finished here) but this tab is at the end of the tabs not indicating that it has a relation with a tab almost at the beginning.

    Still with me? Another example. My music collection has a lot of soundtracks. Trying to organize it completly is a nightmare. Especially if I also want to organize it by genre (so I can easily switch depending on mood). Luckily I am on linux so I can use symlinks so an album can be both in

    • About your point 3, I'm not so sure that 3D would be that helpful, afterall even if you've had a 3D display, it is still projected as 2D on your retina, so you'll still see crossing lines.
      Our brain is quite good at reconstructing 3D-ness for the simple objects that surround us, but I'm not so sure that it'd be able to do a good job for complex 3D diagrams.
      So 3D would help, but how much? That is the question.

      For the tab, you can already do some kind of organisation in 2D, for example you can open different w
    • Sometimes it's easier to deal with 3D representations in 2D. I've used a couple of low end drafting packages on PCs - AutoCAD and it's light version. While drawing 3D objects it is usually easier to draw them in individual planes and then sort out the relationship between those planes (eg. top, side, front views) than as vectors from points. With those drawing programs the contraints are what makes them more useful - the light version at one point was merely a toy due to the inability to constain lines t
  • Everyone already knows the defacto future desktop will be Windows Vista, like it or not.

    Preview screenshots of Vista beta are circulating here:
    http://www.unitedti.org/lofiversion/index.php/t411 3.html [unitedti.org]

    • Everyone already knows the defacto future desktop will be Windows Vista, like it or not.

      You're right. It will be Windows Vista. Windows has 90%+ of the market now, and Vista will be released in about ten years. Therefore Windows Vista will be the operating system of the future!
  • Back in the early days of the computers.... "blah blah blah, this will make work so easy, people will be able to spend most of their free time doing whatever they wish since computers will do everything!!" Look to now "We bought these computers, so we are going to use them as much as possible. Could you please put in another 10 hours per week for now on?"...... Perhaps it's just lack of sleep talking, but if 3D interfaces (and i/o options) mature, why do I see it just giving an excuse to work even hard

  • Historical Inertia (Score:2, Insightful)

    by BigPoppaT ( 842802 )
    Once a technological approach hits a certain number of users, it becomes really difficult to change to a completely different thing.

    The most obvious example I can think of is writing. Using syllabaries or ideograms is clearly not as good a technology as using an alphabet. The learning curve is vastly worse, the total number of symbols that must be memorized is orders of magnitude higher, etc., etc.

    And yet a pretty high percentage of people in the world today read and write in languages that do not use

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I think a navigable distributed 3d desktop would be very interesting. The desktop would be 3 dimensional, but with pieces of it distributed across numbers of computers and accessable, contingent on permissions, from any connected computer.

    Think of a hallway with various doors along the way. Behind each door would be a person's desktop. Navigate down the hallways to a person's "office", enter the door, if permitted, and enter a public version of his desktop. Through an internal door would be the private
  • Your living in it now. :)
  • Software, these days, is designed around workflows and dataflows. In other words, software is no longer simply a device in a designated state onto which data is mapped. It has become something that has a time element intrinsically associated with it. (If the software had no "concept" - for want of a better term - of time, it could not model a flow. A flow requires a past, a present and a future.)

    However, it is highly inefficient to modify data in a purely serial manner. Serial went out with punch tape. You

  • I like the Xenosaga One (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @01:30AM (#14278246) Homepage Journal
    Little hand-held unit, pops up windows and a virtual keyboard as they're needed in free space. I can't wait to see if the heliodisplay [io2technology.com] can be shrunk down into a small enough package to bring that off. I think those things will be the wave of the near future if they can miniturize them enough.
  • How about a panoramic desktop? Maybe spherical... instead of the paged desktops you get with linux where you have a grid of desktops or some such, make it as if the screen is a view of the inside of a sphere. Wouldn't that be fun??? You could pan around and place icons wherever... then zoom in on them to edit. Allow for unlimited granularity... and add big labels to sections of files you'd like to group, or draw keylines around them in some color... maybe be able to select a group of files and context menu
  • The future interface will be a huge unblinking eye with a one button control. Pressing the button will poke the eye or something.
  • Minority report.
  • Here's a different approach [thebrain.com]. If anyone hasn't yet seen it, I'd suggest trying it out. I never made any use of it (the conclusion from everyone who's tried it and loved it), but it was one of the few programs I've ever tried that seemed to make any headache from staring at a computer screen too long just go away.

    That said, I doubt anything will come of any new approaches for years to come. We still have offices, and in those offices we'll work at desks to generate paper which we'll put into labelled fold
  • Cargo Cults (Read all about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult [wikipedia.org]) are what I think about when I see all this focus on interface, interface, interface. In my whole 30 years of being a power computer user, the absolute dead last thing I ever cared about was the interface. Interfaces *should* make no difference to anybody who understands computers. So you type here, or you click there. Document the damn thing so I can learn it and I'm fine. I'll probably be turning off the 3D interface of the future so

  • In 10 years? Maybe a lot like today. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dtfinch ( 661405 ) * on Saturday December 17, 2005 @02:38AM (#14278433) Journal
    My XP desktop looks a lot like my Windows 95 desktop did almost 10 years ago. My Linux desktop is a little different (default bluecurve theme), but the general concepts are the same. People like familiarity, and a 2D theme goes well with a 2D display.

    What I expect in 10 years, if the past 10 years are any indication of the speed of desktop evolution:
    * Better displays on average. Big, crisp, bright, high resolution, high contrast, and especially wider.
    * Similar UI elements as today, plus a few new ones. People don't like change if it involves taking something away.
    * Faster response. Programs will load almost instantly. Maybe they'll just load when you install them, and be swapped out to non-volatile ram when not in use. Though 10 years ago I might have predicted we'd have this by now.
    * Resolution independence. Quality aside, programs will look the same no matter what your screen resolution, and you can smoothly scale them to any size. I'm tempted to say we'll have a lot more vector graphics, but a lot of lazy designers will probably just use high resolution rasters.
    * Mouseover/mouseout background window preview, maybe by alpha blending. If I move the mouse to a background window, I want it to somewhat show through the windows in front of it. Also, if I move the mouse away from a foreground window, I want to slightly see the windows behind it. I'm not 100% certain this'll look good though.
    * If I'm lucky, maybe we'll have a mouse button mapped to opening a system menu whereever your mouse might be on the screen, centered under your mouse. This menu will be multi-column, approximately square shaped to reduce mouse movement and make effective use of space. Holding this button down while turning the mouse wheel will ideally cycle through my virtual desktops, rather than popping up a menu.
    * Touchscreens may become standard, but many will still prefer mice for precision. I hope to see the ability to track multiple fingers/pointers dragging across the display.
    * Better autocomplete in many programs. Tab should become my favorite key. Voice will not replace the keyboard, but only complement it. You can take my keyboard away after you pry it from my cold, dead hands. When I speak into a computer microphone, it'll probably usually be to communicate with real people.
    * Better use of usage statistics. The desktop environment and programs will adapt so that most common actions require 1 click to initiate.
  • Prediction;

    The revolution will happen when HCI stops measuring efficiency as "time to complete task" and "task completion %".

    Discuss.

  • Asymptote? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Julian Morrison ( 5575 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @06:51AM (#14279041)
    I think we're already approaching an asymptote in desktop UI. Future interfaces will be faster, smoother, have live raytraced shadows and hardware transparency and blah, but they'll be basically the same windows and mouse thingy as they have been for the last decade and a half. The big shift won't be better general UI, it will be a trend away from general UI and towards a profusion of single-task small devices with custom UI. Example, ipod. Another example, satnav units for cars.

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