Microsoft Office Labs releases “vision of the future” videos every six months or so. Vision 2019 was launched a few days ago.
While much of the technology is Microsoft-centric (someday everyone will have a Surface table), the concepts are insightful and cool. Enjoy.
Also check out their Healthcare Vision demo.
Google has begun testing a new interface for Adwords. A few MCC users have received invites to experiment with the new UI (not me, unfortunately).
It looks like you can request an invite through the Inside Adwords blog.
Here’s a post from Tim Cohn that offers a brief preview with a screenshot.
At first glance, it looks like they plan to integrate more Google Analytics-like charting features and possibly more robust navigation.
Adwords is due for a UX upgrade. The current approach seems to be collapsing under the weight of all the new features. Some things I’d like to see:
I recently caught a short but sensible post from TechRadar.com that makes the case that Apple is great at interface design because they are one of few technology companies who value “pleasure” as a design principle.
Great concept and very true – when was the last time you used a device or application (from a company other than Apple) and found the experience actually…ummm…enjoyable?
So what is this user experience pleasure principle? Why do Apple products continue to inspire and dazzle users while products from companies like Microsoft and HP just tend to bore us?
UX designers are conditioned to think that user workflow, task completion and logic are the essentials of a quality experience. Elements like design craftsmanship and detail are often considered extraneous and wasteful—or are simply seen as just “adding color”. Many leading design firms and pundits have trumpeted this concept of simplicity over embellishment—function always trumps form.
It’s becoming clear, however, that interfaces don’t need to be stark and bland to be good. Some of the most interesting and powerful digital experiences can be seen in game UI. And companies like Apple continue to show that creating a sense of wonder in your product experience just may please customers as much as simplified design workflows.
We’re working a couple new projects focused on gestural and touch UI at RDVO. Some of our work may be applied to future Microsoft Surface table applications. We’ve found that actually procuring a Surface isn’t easy, so in its absence we developed a cool simulator using projectors and sensors we had lying around. Works pretty good, too.
Click on the image below to see a larger version.
Remember the futuristic user interfaces used by Tom Cruise’s character in Minority Report? He was able to interact with the system and manipulate data through hand motions. This user interface technique is known as gesture recognition and is one of a number of emerging new computer-human interaction models.
Gestural recognition allows users to interact with a system without providing a direct input like a tap or click. The system recognizes hand movements and other signals and responds accordingly. Combinations of gestures (or a gestural system not unlike sign language) could be used to interact at much higher speeds than current interface techniques. It’s not a stretch to imagine gestural UI systems that adapt and personalize to a user’s specific gestural mannerisms. When combined with voice recognition, gestural UI will create new paradigms for computer/human interactions that could revolutionize how we interface with machines.
And we’re not that far away…
Gestural UIs are already out there in rudimentary form and are evolving at frighteningly fast rate:
I expect we’ll see more and more applications and prototypes emerge in the next few years.
When Minority Report came out in 2002 the technologies it envisioned seemed far off. Gestural UIs were only one example—the film showed paper-thin LCDs, personalized ad displays, and 3-D imaging. With advances in materials and processors we may see these technologies a lot sooner than we think.
A group of astronomers in Japan have created a new four-dimensional approach for visualizing astronomical data. The 4D2U Navigator project is a Flash application that allows you to navigate through the vastness of the known universe using time, distance, and mass to provide an immersive tour through space.
Chrome, Google’s new open source browser, hit the Internets yesterday with the kind of measured excitement we’ve come to expect from Google releases. After a day of experimenting, I’ve come to the realization that Chrome is the Mini Cooper of web browsers—small and speedy and well designed…but may ultimately probably lacking the “oomph” to get SUV drivers to switch. No one was surprised to see Google launch a web browser, and envisioning Chrome as the core of a web-based OS is by no means a stretch.
Don’t me get wrong, Chrome is pretty cool and they’ve integrated a handful of user experience elements that are surprising in their logic and brilliance. Here are four that struck me.
1. Dragging a tab to the desktop creates a new browser window
One of the new innovations in Chrome is that each tab is treated as its own browser. A nice byproduct of this functionality is the ability to create new browser windows by simply dragging a browser tab Chrome to the desktop. Browser tabs were a great innovation a few years ago, but can be somewhat limiting—viewing two pages side-by-side requires the spawning of a new browser window. Chrome makes a thorny process a lot easier.
2. Maximum Screen Optimization
Chrome barely seems like an application. Extreme care and attention was taken to minimize the profile of browser controls and navigation, opting to dedicate as much screen space to the main window. The top navigation and menu controls have approximately 33% less profile than IE or Firefox (and this at the default settings…no toolbars added). Anyone who works in UX understands how difficult it is to maximize controls without sacrificing usability. Chrome does a great job at this.
3. The Omnibox
The multi-purpose search and URL box might take some getting used to, but overall is a nice tactic for minimizing and optimizing input fields. Although Firefox’s awesome bar has a better experience and is more legible, they still support a separate URL and search input box. I like where Chrome is going with this.
4. Kill Screen
Chrome displays a “kill screen” when it detects an unresponsive page. While this may not be that useful with web pages in general, this could be an incredibly useful feature with application development.
Finally, Chrome is built for speed. While new features and functions are always welcome with web browsers, if they come at the sacrifice of speed they are problematic. At first look, the UX of Chrome seems to be a step back from Firefox and Explorer, but after some experimentation and use it becomes clear that Google is looking beyond features and envisioning browsing as a user’s core computing experience. This minimalist approach may make users uncomfortable at first, but it should not take long for Chrome to gain significant share of the browser market.
Diagrams from Apple’s leaked patents for a multi-touch tablet give us a glimpse into some interesting new developments in the evolution of touch UIs.
Some of the cool elements include iPhone-like scroll wheels and lots of touch-and-zoom experiences.
But perhaps most interesting is the full-screen QWERTY keyword. It will be interesting to see how Apple implements this feature. As an iPhone user, I find typing on the screen to be difficult–mostly because of the lack of tactile response. I wonder how this will play out on a more expansive interface with full-sized keys.
I’ve been working on a new research concept and prototype that will illustrate some future directions of search engines. New emerging technologies like the semantic web, RDF, the mobile web, and social media may open up unprecedented opportunities for controlling the ebb and flow of information. This control will be enhanced and increased as more powerful UI platforms like Adobe Flex and MS SilverLight continue to evolve. Accessing the WWW may become more akin to operating a customized application GUI than the linear browsing behavior we see today.
Key issues:
These are questions I’ll be addressing with the team at RDVO. More coming soon, and any interesting ideas or links would be helpful!
The recent launch of Cuil.com and Microsoft’s acquisition of Powerset.com has piqued some new interest semantic search engines. To deliver on their promise, these new search tools must provide a new experience for search, integrating a number of new paradigms and experiences.
In preparation for a new project, I put together a quick presentation that compares design approaches for a number of prominent semantic search engines, including Powerset.com, Sindice.com, Cuil.com, Twine.com, and hakia.com. Specific attention was paid to general presentation, input methods, display or results, and categorical results approach.
Worth a look if you’re interested in semantic search.