10 GUI

I had a few comments on the 10GUI that we watched a video about in class.  It seemed like a good idea, but I don't think that is very revolutionary from current UI's.  The multi touch keyboard was a very nice touch, with it detecting (at least) 10 finger inputs.  And it actually having different functions that corresponded to up to 5 different fingers was pretty surprising.  But the fact that everything beyond one finger was only being used for window layout was dissapointing.  In fact two fingers being used to scroll down in a window is exactly the same as the touchpad on an Apple computer.  The only difference it that on 10GUI, it has input at multiple points, not just 2 fingers controlling one point as on an Apple.  Also, the windows having to be layed out side-by-side seemed very restricting.  What if you have two wide but short windows you want to lay out above and below eachother?  Is this not possible in 10GUI.  And 10GUI, Con10uum....these are terrible names, how can people jump on board with this product if they have to call it that.  Stick to a word man, no numbers.  

Even though I am ripping on this,  I think it is going in the right direction.  The big multi touch pad is very cool, especially if you can control the whole screen at once with the touchpad, instead of having to drag your finger across the pad multiple times to get all the way across. I like being able to use multiple fingers on my MacBook touchpad, but I think with 5 fingers, there is a lot more potential than just resizing windows.  I'm sure with this kind of system, someone could make a game with a pretty intricate control system.  The problem of seeing all of your windows needs to be addressed, but 10GUI's approach isn't much different than Microsoft's new alt-tab scrolling list of windows, or Apple's expose.  Overall, I am excited to see if this project will develop further in the future or if other systems will implement some of 10GUI's features.

Recreating classic interfaces

Sometime the interfaces people want are not always the most natural or efficient interfaces. Some people like what they are used to, or retro interfaces. One example is this game system made out of a Nintendo Entertainment System cartridge. They put a screen and buttons in it, and it has a hard drive that you can store NES and gameboy games on. You can find it here . This system may not be advanced as a new Game Boy DS or Sony PSP, but it can play nintendo games and has the nintendo controls inside of a nintendo cartridge. I couldn't ask for more. Sometimes nostalgia can make people like an interface more.

Since this is for my System Interface Design class, I probably shouldn't advocate using something like nostalgia to advocate an obsolete UI, but I can't help it. The Nintendo was the first system I ever played, and I miss the days when I didn't have responsibilities, I could just play nintendo all the time. But getting back to the topic, this isn't the only recreating of an old system. Many people do it, here is a not so old ps2 . Both of these systems have similar controls to the original system they are recreating. Is this because they like the interface itself more than something else they could have done, or just because they want to play it as close to the original as they could make with their custom system?

Too much touch

I realize that this class is about using more than just mouses and keyboards for input, which I think is great. I also think that the keyboard can be a great input for certain things. But I think that people should realize that they each have pros and cons, and in the future we shouldn't just rely on one or the other.

If you have ever used a touch screen phone or computer terminal and tried to input many words, you might have wished you had a keyboard. And sometimes drawing in paint you wish you had a touch screen to draw more easily. These are two totally different uses of a computer, that can be optimized by using two different types of input. The surface is a great piece of machinery, but I think anyone would agree it would not be a great tool for the entry of massive amounts of data.

Therefore in the future I think people should not necessarily move away from keyboards and mouses altogether, but definitely in certain applications. I think this is why the tablet pc keeps failing to take off. The way operating systems are currently set up is more for a keyboard and mouse. This makes it hard to take full advantage of a tablet pc without breaking out the keyboard.

When computers don't work

Technology is great as long as it works as expected. If it doesn't it can get on your nerves and make you wish computers were never invented. I had a few instances this weekend where I was a little frustrated with some interfaces I used.

One thing that always gives me trouble is logging into my blogspot account. If I click on log in, it takes me to blogger.com, which is the mother site to blogspot, but still not the site I was on. It always prefills in the username with one of my other google accounts (which may be my browsers fault actually). Because I use both accounts for websites, I got confused and though thats what I used for my username. It said log in with your google account, so I wasn't sure if the password would be the same as my google account or not... so it took a while to get logged in, to say the least.

Another problem I had was at the airport using Delta's check in computer interface. I kept trying to scan the barcode on my itinerary but it wouldn't detect it. So then I had to use the touch screen to key in my confirmation code.

The last thing I will complain about was the toll road. Instead of having a person work there 24 hours, the toll at Notre Dame now has an automated pay station where you insert your ticket and money to pay. However, it would not read my ticket to tell me how much I needed to pay. Luckily, after inserting it 10 times, it detected it. Thankfully I didn't have to spend the night there.

These interfaces frustrated me this weekend, but I think I'll stay in the computer science department.