Nokie HumanForm

[Peter Korsten]

Op 13-7-2012 22:55, Andrew Tarpinian schreef:

> There is something in between that, the right interface is when we can use or hands(or body) to their full potential, not just the tip of our finger for poking... The real robot revolution, will happen because Siri is really tired of people poking her all the time, after all, it's not nice to point.
>
> I don't know if telepathy will ever be a good answer, our brains need a filter, and that is our body. Unfiltered oscillators get really annoying after a while.

At some point, you reach a stage where you need so much computing power 
to react to all gestures and movement, that you drain your battery just 
by walking the stairs. Or you have the computing done in a cloud, which 
means that your life comes to a halt when there's a bit of breeze in 
Virginia, because technology hasn't advanced to such a stage that they 
put electricity wires underground.

A user interface is always going to be an abstraction. Just like you 
need to learn to walk, you need to learn a user interface. The trick is 
to create a user interface that is easy enough to learn. 'Intuitive' 
doesn't come into it, because there's nothing intuitive about talking to 
someone who's not right next to you.

A car, for example, doesn't have a very good user interface. In Europe, 
you need to press the brake and the kludge, turn a key (or press a 
button), slowly release the kludge until it catches, let go of the 
brake, gently press the accelerator whilst equally gently releasing the 
kludge. If you do it wrong, the engine stops working and you need to 
reboot your car. No wonder it takes us ages to learn. But it could be 
worse: at least a car won't explode if you operate it incorrectly, 
something that can't be said of a steam engine. A steam engine can 
actually kill you, not to mention that you need to initiate the start-up 
procedure several hours before you can use it.

Yet, countless people in Europe drive cars, not once thinking about the 
kludge or the gears. So just using the hands is actually a pretty good 
idea when it comes to operate a mobile device. People are used to using 
their hands, and particularly their fingertips. Maybe such a device 
could start purring when you gently stroke it with your entire hand, but 
it would be a bit useless, at least outside Japan.

- Peter