Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Great Blogs about Natural User Interfaces: Joshua Blake Deconstructing the NUI & Jonathan Brill : Multitouch Maven_ (Point and Do)
Josh Blake is a .NET, SharePoint, and Microsoft Surface consultant for InfoStrat, located in Northern Virginia. If you are interested in natural user interfaces, you'll appreciate his blog, Deconstructing the NUI He posts only a few times a month, but what you'll find is thoughtful insight regarding natural user interfaces that rely on multi-touch or gesture interaction.
Here are a few of Josh's posts:
The Natural User Interface Revolution
Pleasing the Brain with Magical Interfaces
Deconstructing: SilverPAC's Multi-Touch Website
Limiting the Multi-touch Vocabulary
Jonathan Brill is an independent consultant who focuses on multitouch product strategy, design, and development, and previously served as an embedded consultant at Microsoft Surface. His blog, Multitouch Maven, provides a wealth of information regarding multi-touch and gesture interaction and interfaces.
Here are a few of his posts:
New Multitouch Interface Conventions
Creating Intuitive Gestures Using Object Orientation
Using Auras to Maintain User Orientation
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Why "new" ways of interaction?
Why "new" ways of interaction?
Jonathan Brill, of Point & Do, has several video clips that explain the basics of multi-touch and gesture interaction. He is currently leading a book study of Dan Saffer's "Designing Gestural Interfaces" and is one of a small (and growing) group of people who are looking at ways technology can support human interaction and activities in a more natural, enjoyable, and intuitive manner.
"Mouse-based thinking simply doesn't work here....WIMP best practices slow users down, confuse them, and make multi-touch applications difficult to learn...a new class of applications....make it easier for groups of users to interact with complex information.
In the video clip below, Brill discusses the need to escape from the WIMP mindset. (Windows, Icons, Mouse & Point, the current way most people interact with computers and related devices.)
Here is a transcript of key points from the video:
"It has been 25 years since the first rich multi-touch system was publicly shown. That's a lot of research for a shocking lack of progress. By contrast, 25 years after the demo of the mouse, GUI (graphical user interface)had evolved into Windows, MS Office, Mosaic, Lan, and the Apple Newton, the basis for today's business productivity tools."
"The mouse was successful because early engineers developed a simple, clear interaction framework that everyone could follow. It was called WIMP: Windows, Icons, Menus, & Pointers. WIMP worked. It was cool, and it increased usability and solved key technology issues of the day:"
- Windows were a way to manage content on small displays
- Icons were a space-efficient way to point and click on commands
- Menus hid irrelevant content
- Pointers visually tracked mouse interaction
"Multi-touch needs an analogue to WIMP that makes it easy to use, across platforms. At Point & Do, we think we've found it. It is what we call PATA:
Places
Lighting, focus, and depth, simplified searching and effecting hyperlinked content
Animation
Using animation to subtly demonstrate what applications do and how to use them is a better solution than using icons. Animations makes apps easier to learn.
Things
Back in the days of floppy disks, objects helped us organize our content. This limitation was forced by arcane technology, but it did have one huge advantage. We used our spatial memory to help us navigate content. Things will help us organize content and manipulate controllers across a growing variety of devices.
Auras
Auras will help us track what we are tracking and when an interaction has been successful."
Here are a few more videos from Jonathan Brill:
Multi-touch Design Techniques Part 1 of 3
Multi-touch Design Techniques Part 2 of 3
RELATED:
"Surface and Tangible Computing, and the "Small" Matter of People and Design" (pdf) -Bill Buxton, ISSCC 2008
Designing for Interaction -Dan Saffer
The Computer for the 21st Century Mark Weiser, Scientific American, 09, 1991
(Note: I read this article when I was on a plane from Charlotte to Detroit, years ago, and never forgot about it. If you are just beginning to learn about HCI or ubiquitous/pervasive computing, or off-the desktop interaction design or application development, it is well worth the read!)
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Jonathan Brill's Point & Do: "Your Guide to Natural User Interfaces"
Jonathan Brill consults on multi-touch product strategy and is the author of the Point & Do blog/website that is full of interesting applications, demos, links, and comments related to natural user interface applications.
Here are a few of the videos he's posted:
(You can visit his website for additional information, including how to participate in the Multi-touch Book Club discussion of Dan Saffer's book, Designing Gestural Interfaces.)
Infusion's Multi-touch Applications
David Smith's Raptor: Building Games with a Tabletop Computer
Raptor: Building Games with a Tabletop Computer from David Smith on Vimeo.
Prototype 3D Media Viewer for Surface
Prototype 3D Media Viewer for Surface from Clarity Consulting on Vimeo.
Prototype T-Shirt Designer for Surface
Prototype T-Shirt Designer for Surface from Clarity Consulting on Vimeo.
Snowboard Designer
Surface Promo from IdentityMine on Vimeo.
Prototype Whiteboard for Surface
Prototype Whiteboard for Surface from Clarity Consulting on Vimeo.
