A new vision for computer interaction
As far as the modern day home and work computer is concerned, there really hasn’t been any miraculous change. We all know the traditional interface as being presented on a single plane. Everything that we’ve experienced while navigating the machine has been on a two-dimensional area. Why is it that in 30 years, we are still confined to this type of interaction?
I had an idea about placing different windows on an oblong spherical shape similar to what you see below.
Our active windows would be within a 2-dimensional rectangular form, similar to what we are already used to. The difference is that this spherical form builds these applications upon itself on the outside of the area of view. These windows are essentially active applications that load themselves into free spaces on the sphere.
Opposed to the traditional ‘mouse’ form of navigation, this interface would be navigated with a rolling ball equipped with click function, working alongside your standard keyboard. Hot-keys will jump you to a predefined axis on the sphere. To freely navigate the ‘brain’ hot-keys can also be used. For instance, to freely navigate the sphere, you could hold F1 and it will disengage the active window from the screen lock view, then navigate with your ball. To zoom out and in, the F2 key can be used, and you can add multiple open windows in the active screen view.
Monitor size only continues to increase and resolution is becoming more and more precise. Using a computer in this fashion offers a more engaging interactive experience while navigating. The scrolling ball technique could potentially be more effective than a click and drag technique.
Just a thought..
Challenges are fun, but not on your website
There I said it. We all can maintain some form of patience (some better than others,) but we don’t always have it for your website. Now it’s different if the purpose of your site is to be a puzzle, but if it’s not than don’t make it that way. Obviously these things don’t happen intentionally. This can be due to a plethora of different excuses, but it’s primarily being generally unprepared and/or lazy.
The way that we process things are through multiple receptors connected to our brains. When browsing a website, these are perceived in 2 different forms–
Cognitive Understanding – Attention, memory, problem solving, decision
Spatial Visualization – Perception, relevance, emotion, dimension
We use subconscious mental processing every day while we do tasks. This is no different from studying or researching. In this case, were doing our research on your website. If you can’t hit these direct conscious and indirect subconscious cues, than your not offering me all that I need to indecisively comprehend what I’m dealing with.
Don’t make it more of a chore when we have the capability of making it a luxury. Leave the challenges to the video games.
Design for the Conscious Mind
So I found myself in search of project/task management software to gift for the holiday. I’ve used quite a few different kinds of management software, and there’s something that I came to realize. Where’s the form!? Form as in form and function. My belief is that most of these aren’t designed but rather just developed and released. With todays modern web capabilities you would think some of these would be a bit more attractive to look at.
Apart from just making an application or software more visually appealing, form can also enhance the user experience and make it generally easier to learn/use. Yes, I’m through and through a windows person, however I have to give credit where credit is due. Look at what happened when Windows stopped designing the majority of Apples software. Not only is Mac software far superior in terms of usability, it looks great!
Being that it’s the holiday, I would like to wrap something up, but all the great management software is cloud based. In my search for a packaged software that is proven to work great, as well as look good, I came up empty handed. The package artwork is pretty horrid for most of these products as well. Step it up and hire yourselves a good designer and a user experience professional!
Distraction, the new Concentration
WordPress allows you to enable a plugin that creates a snow fall effect. I’m in the holiday mood so I chose to activate it, disregarding any possible repercussions.
Somebody was reading a post of mine on this site and actually mentioned the fact that the snow was distracting. I hadn’t really given it any thought when I turned the effect on, but it brought up an interesting point. Typically we perceive distractions as being a bad thing, as distracted means unproductive, (or something like that.) We want to be able to focus our audiences attention so that they get the most out of our message as possible.
I immediately commended them and duly noted the removal of the effect. They proceeded to tell me that it helps to read the page in an articulate manner instead of scanning. I do realize that some of my writing can be technical in the sense that it tends to be colorfully arranged and open for interpretation.
Peoples minds are wandering 30% of the time
Obviously this is all subjective to the activity that you’re doing, but it still means that a whole lot of people aren’t paying attention. When your mind starts wandering, you don’t realize it until your finished.
What we might perceive to be a distraction, might be beneficial to help aid a high level of concentration
Tablets and kindles are the next series of portable computing, however they are ideal for reading on! What if there was a measured increment of time that told your computer to distract you for a millisecond. Would this help to keep us focused? Driving in the rain or snow forces us to be more cautionary, but does it actually make us better drivers?
Sure there are millions of variables, but I found this an interesting thought.. Let me know if anybody would be interested in collaborating on an experiment like this.
Progressive Disclosure
When you’re trying to relay a message you want it to hit with as much emphasis as possible. As soon as one is able to comprehend or break down the idea, they should know exactly what it is and why it matters to them.
I realize that I don’t always write in this manner, but it all depends on what it is you’re trying to get across. I write in more of a metaphysical context that can get skewed, and the message lost in translation. In this case I use the technique to get your mind racing, and the point is to never fully understand my message, but rather interpret it and take from it whatever you will.
In this case I will try to demonstrate progressive disclosure in a manner that is a bit more explanatory.
Don’t provide too much information all at the same time, your readers will get confused
In order to reach the broadest audience possible, you must offer something that reaches out to each type of mental persona. This can be a difficult thing to obtain when you’re trying to limit the feed of information. A way to overcome this is to break your content down into smaller chunks, then be sure to hit on what each type of person wants to see all within itself.
It requires multiple steps
I realize that I just said to offer something to each persona all within one piece of content, and now I’m telling you that it requires multiple steps. Well it does, but you must still reach out to everyone of interest, in whatever way negligible. You must lure people into a funnel, and if they don’t care to be lured, than it’s going to take some major problem solving skills on your part. Whether you’re trying to relay resourceful info (such as in my case,) or trying to sell a product that requires a fair amount of convincing, it’s going to take some mind play.
Present yourself as an expert as often as possible, yet encourage others to play a part
People are more receptive to peer reviews or testimonials than they are to expert explanation. You can’t negate the fact that your followers/customers is what drives your service or business. They are the reason that you exist. It is crucial that you’re receptive to what they have to say, and decide whether or not it’s something you have to improve upon. It’s also important to recognize customer’s compliments so that you can focus on what you’re doing well and try to keep that in prime order.
Put yourself in their position
It’s important that you see what they see, and by they I mean the people who will be navigating this content. Progressive disclosure only works when you know what they want, and since yourself is not them, you never will fully understand.. But you can do your best. Create persona’s and work off of that.
Don’t provide too much information all at once.
Organizing Information
We have this fundamental form of communication, that as of now, is the primary way that we choose (know how) to communicate. Of course we have video, images, and even interactivity in the form of exercises or games.. But.. None of them compare to the breadth of wealth that is the written (or typed for you fastidious ones,) word.
It never ceases to amaze me how badly organized all of this is. I mean don’t get me wrong, there are some who do it well, but not nearly enough for equating this knowledge into something of valuable substance. I remember reading this somewhere, “they are all designed, but not all of them are designed well.”
When you’re laying out the structure of your websites data flow/information architecture, there needs to be a desirable flow to it all. Keep it simple enough to quickly and easily break down. In order for people to process this information to it’s fullest potential, it needs to direct us. Progressive Disclosure is an awesome method of doing this.
If you give people too many options, they are likely to not select any at all.
I guess this applies here as well. That’s not to say it’s impossible to navigate through unorganized and overwhelming information. Sure, eventually we will get through it (if it’s that enticing,) and get from it what we will. But if this was carefully arranged in a way that funnels us inward through the entire process, we’d be a hell of a lot more receptive.
Just sayin’..
What’s Next for User Interface
So let me start off here.. This article doesn’t begin with any amount of prior research, but a reasonable (subjective) amount of experimentation has gone into this expressionistic showcase of ideas.
The idea of human and computer interaction goes back only a small handful of years. The humanistic instinction is still extremely primitive, as well as our comprehension for more exasperated ideology. What we know of computer interface (as far as I’ve known) has gone from command prompt, to a collection of user installed applications.
Our computers don’t really do anything special apart from allowing us to utilize it as a building block. The mathematical algorithms behind data organization come about from an indistinctive urge that we all possess, to build something out of nothing. The way that we develop our interface is born of this subconscious urge to figure out a more fundamental form of comprehension.
What is going to be the next step beyond breaking the social norm and advancing what we understand to be digital navigation? We have interactive programs that read our physical movement, and even emotion, then interprets it as code, and expresses it into something fluid that we can tangibly interact with.
User interface is simplistic and boring. It works, yet it won’t be satisfactory for the most of us forever. We’re all inpatient. Who’s impatient enough to do something about it.
Is it you?
Ramblings..
