New Goggles Offer Minority Report-Style Interface With Heads-Up Display 67
Lucas123 writes "A Taiwanese non-profit R&D organization is demonstrating a new heads-up type display that allows users to interact with the floating virtual screens using finger swipes. The new i-Air Touch technology from the Industrial Technology Research Institute is being developed for an array of devices, including PCs, wearable computers and mobile devices. The technology allows a user's hand to be free of any physical device such as a touchpad or keyboard for touch input. ITRI plans to license the patented technology to manufacturers. The company sees the technology being used in not only consumer arenas (video), but also for medical applications such as endoscopic surgery and any industrial applications that benefit from hands-free input."
Lots of things easier (Score:5, Interesting)
The first keyboards were heavy and had tactile feedback. If you fumbled a key typing in your password, you knew whether it entered because you could feel the "click".
If you pay attention that's not really how you type. You learn where keys are by muscle memory, not because they have a shape. When I'm typing if I'm doing it right I'm not feeling edges of keys, just keys depressing under my finger. And I notice mistakes on the screen, not from where my fingers hit.
Nowadays we have buttons to tap, incrementing the count by 1 each time. Tap 50 times to set the minute display, and if you go too far you have to go all the way around again.
We do? That sounds horrible. Just about anything I've ever used that has you set large sets of numbers just lets you type them directly.
Modern typing is done on the display (phone, surface), so not only don't you have tactile feedback you can't feel the boundaries of the keys, and your fingers mask the key display. And it's really tiny - in order to access all the keys you have to type extra keys that switch between keyboards (upper/lower/symbol). Again, it was done for ease of manufacturing, not ease of use.
Sorry, but I consider that wrong in lots of ways.
You have tactile feedback in that you can feel where you are in relation to the edge of the device. Also while your finger obscures the key pressing displays what the key is so you can see exactly what was hit. But touch typing is no harder than on a computer, because over time you learn where to press and also because predictive mechanisms correct most mistakes.
Also, the problem is inherently one of size. Touch screens are not "more convenient for the manufacturer". You have no idea how much software and hardware is involved to get a touch screen keyboard working well. A physical keyboard is just buttons. But the reason why touch screen keyboards are winning out in small form factors is because the are more convenient for the USER. As good as the Blackberry keyboard was, I hated using those tiny keys and the virtual keyboard on a touchscreen has larger keys - and also can tailor the keyboard to a task like entering numbers rather than having to deal with a row of tiny numbers on a tiny keyboard.
Is the ribbon any easier than, for example, cascading menus?
I don't like the ribbon much but yes, direct access is in fact easier than deeply nested menus.
Ever since minority report people have been touting the wonders of air-gesture input, and that it is the next "big thing", but is it better?
Even though I disagree with your core argument, I do agree with your conclusion. I'm not sure air-gesture input is better. But I think like all things, over time it will be folded into the mix as just another possible way to tell a computer what to do. I rank it slightly ahead of talking as a socially acceptable interface, although you probably look a bit crazier with the motion.
Re: Worst possible user interface. (Score:0, Interesting)
Wrong.
I'll tell you why. The MR interface has a lot of useful subtleties your brain obviously couldn't wrap around. The idea that we can point and click or type on the keyboard is kind of absurd done in the air, sure. But if I'm working a stepper type control with a range, I might prefer an interface that can detect my 'turning the knob' gesture. Especially if the precision is essentially a 10th generation Kinect type sensor. I can perform better gestures with both my upper limbs better than I could with my dexterous fingers.
The tech isn't really there, and this device hits a few good points but misses more.
Yes, a gesture filled world will look odd at first, but higher precision tech will iron out the wrinkles and make it less goofy.
-Guy who forgot his login credentials