Some people think that this is a vision of the future of interface design:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6cNdhOKwi0&hd=1
Others don’t.
http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/
Personally, I have always thought that these videos of the future are pretty short-sighted and I tend to side with Bret’s thinking in the article above. If this is the best vision of the future–essentially, now plus one–I think that’s a pretty sad indication of where we’re going. Though I do appreciate the attention to typographic detail and clean designs, (I’m a sucker for Gotham Bold and superfluous infographics myself), I think we can do better. Not that I have the answers, but I don’t think making faster and thinner and more connected versions of everything we have now is all that forward-thinking…
Incidentally, there were two examples in the film that I thought were really great. The first was the glasses she put on in the first scene. Not only was that an interesting technology (audio translation in a foreign country), but it also is one of the only examples in the video that didn’t involve touching a screen. It involved using different senses – visual and auditory – to convey information. What would be even cooler (though I’ve already seen some of this tech) is to have the glasses visually translate written words that you are looking at. Secondly, as she’s riding in the taxi, the windows are location-aware and tell her where her meeting is going to be the next day. Again, no body gestures or finger-swiping necessary, just using something that we are already really good at – looking out a window and wondering what’s on the other side.
What do you think? How can interface design evolve to be more responsive to the other 99% of our bodies besides the tip of our finger?
