Dreaming Of Better User Interface

Many years ago someone, I think it was Jean Louis Gassee, head of Apple Products at the time, said something I have always kept with me. The essence of the idea is that speed is an important element of user interface.

At the time, this was a bit of a radical concept. It was in the early graphical interface era, circa 1990s, and we all thought about interface in terms of widgets and metaphors. And so the idea of responsiveness as being as critical as how the system is visually and structurally designed was a bit radical until you thought about it for a few seconds. And then it was obvious.

Well yesterday, I had a couple of those types of insights that take me away from the basics of icon design and interaction flow.

It started with me sitting next to someone on the subway who was reading the New York Times. It is the newspaper I read every day. But only online. I had read the paper already for the day. And yet, looking over the shoulder of this reader, it became clear that I really had not read the paper. There were so many articles that I would have wanted to read, and ideas that I had not absorbed reading the paper online. From over someones shoulder, I was absorbing much more information than I was from my own PC web browser.

It got me thinking about just how poor a user interface window an LCD screen is. In a giant double fold newspaper, I can see *far* more than I can see on a computer screen. And I can change pages and go back and forth with ease. In fact, paper is an amazing user interface. I blows computers away.

Then later I went to the CenterNetworks/drop.io party and I was talking with David Parmet about virtual offices. We were talking about how much more cost effective not having an office is, and how unnecessary so much corporate real estate is. And yet today I am having a meeting with two relatively technical folks that could not be had online. Skype just wouldn't do the trick. It turns out that in person is the only way to do this particular meeting that will be part demo and part brainstorm. Emotion matters. The physical matters. Such meetings require full communications bandwidth. But I yearn for a computing environment that will let me express more of me, and received more from others.

The point is that the biggest thing we are missing right now in user interfaces is communications bandwidth. I am not talking about bits per second, but sensory input/output per second. I feel like computers currently allow us to transmit perhaps 10% of what we can transmit in person, or perhaps 30% of what we can transmit on paper.

The next generation, or perhaps several generations ahead of computers need to allow us to communicate more of what we want to communicate. That means more surface area. More depth. More sensitivity. More dynamic range. More resolution.

I feel like software designers are reaching diminishing returns in terms of user experience. To make dramatic leaps forward, physical interfaces need to get radically better. At the party last night, people were playing with Wii, and Guitar Hero, both incredibly minimal examples of enhanced sensory input. Both huge hits. People crave the ability to physically interact with technology in new richer ways.

I also think display technology is an area ripe for innovation. Holographic screens, wall projected screens and heads up displays need to be "consumerized." Many years ago the concept of virtual reality was introduced. The interface was based on the idea of glasses with embedded screens that allowed us to see radically larger surface areas. As I recollect, the system tracked head movements so that you could explore 3d space by turning your head.

A much simpler version of these early virtual reality exploration glasses would be great for modern interface exploration. These concepts may sound a bit too geeky, but I think the right execution could easily have us seeing this kind of stuff as very mainstream. These are the kinds of things that I would personally be thinking really hard about if my plate were not already incredibly full.

The bottom line is I think we are craving better interaction and communication with our devices, and there is not nearly enough thought and funding going into this area. I could rant some more about the waste of effort going into things like one too many social networks. But I won't since most of you know I feel not enough resources are going into things that really matter. But perhaps some of the great entrepreneurs who read this blog and are trying to figure out what the next big thing is will think about some of these ideas. I'd love to chat about this some more so please leave comments or write offline.