I am in a SXSW session about Minority Report – moving interfaces on from 2 dimensions and point/click.
More importantly, I can give a tea report: the tea so far is bad. Earl Grey with half-and-half cream was *not* the morning comfort I was hoping for. I am hoping this will improve.
Austin is too far to travel. How could we move Austin to Bristol?
More SXSW nonsense here: http://www.ished.net/projects/sxsw/
“moving interfaces on from 2 dimensions and point and click”
I tend to stay focused on my nice simple, 76 dimensional interface when I’m working with computers.
(i.e. the standard keys on my keyboard in a terminal window)
To be honest, while 3d interfaces are nice (and I’m not talking about psudo-3d interfaces like Compiz), I can’t help feeling that adding one extra dimension to input or output seems like a minor change.
As mentioned above, I have 76 orthogonal inputs on my keyboard, plus four on my mouse (left & right buttons, vertical, horizontal, vertical scroll and horizontal scroll).
note multi(dual)-touch displays/inputs like the iphone and macbooks don’t have right button, vertical scroll or horizontal scroll, they have the distance between fingers (horizontal and vertical), and the number of fingers – but that’s not orthogonal to the horizontal/vertical difference in finger spacings, so they effectively end up with one less input.
For outputs, we have sound, colour (which can fairly easily be broken down into 3 continuous dimensions), x and y coordinates.
I’m fairly happy with my six dimensional output interface, but if I wasn’t then I could always use a force-feedback device to provide some tactile information in a seventh, eigth, or even ninth dimension.
Oh no! I know nothing about the next generation of interfaces but I know a thing or two about tea….. always, always travel with your own tea supply.
The US tea is totally different and takes some getting used to… and half and half is what people put in their coffee. It’s not very nice in tea. Good luck!