The following is just some ideas/thoughts/comments on user interfaces.

There are lots of things that can and has been said about computer user interfaces. Ever since the first computers the way a person interact with a computer has been changing – but very slowly. If you go by popular science fiction then we should be talking and even mind controlling computers by now but I don’t think we’re quite there yet, if ever.

The last 2 decades or so most development into computer user interfaces has revolved around the Graphical User Interface (GUI) and the keyboard and the mouse. Now and then some different way to interact with the GUI has come along like touch screens and even the failed light pen. Voice input/output has been tried but this is generally the exception. I can’t help thinking about Star Trek when I think about interacting with a computer by voice… ‘Computer, tuna mayo sandwich please!” – of course you need a replicator as well 🙂 In those scenarios there (usually) were no real GUI to talk about as well. Ah, we can only dream…

The point it that most of these interfaces still use some computer screen with text and pictures (graphics) to display what the computer ‘is thinking about’. Most of that is also limited to 2D interfacing – with the exception of games where you ‘play’ a character moving around a virtual 3D world. I have seen attempts of creating a generic 3D GUI but it was ‘still’ displayed on a 2D monitor (with keyboard and mice as user input). Even today with more and more devices that uses ‘touch’ like in touchscreen we’re still stuck in a 2D  world. It turns out processing voice and sound as input is very ‘computing heavy’. Outputting sound/graphics is of course very easy but that is generally a ‘dumb’ or scripted way of dealing with a computer. Any tape recorder could do that – like what they did in the 60’s/70’s. However, if you want to interact with a computer the input part is also, if not the most, important.

To my knowledge, even the best speech recognition software today still take a lengthy time to be ‘trained’ to (fairly) accurately accept some voice commands. Even then it is usually only from one person. If another guy comes around the whole story has to be done from scratch (almost). Also, most ‘applications’ don’t support that way of user interfacing anyway. You really have to admire our human brains for doing these things without all that effort! We are much better at interfacing verbally and visually with each other. It’s a shame that our machines that we create cannot do anything similarly (by that I mean to do these things so easily).

The same I suppose can be said about ‘graphical’ input but at least it seems things in that department is changing a bit. With Microsoft’s Kinect technology it is becoming easier to interact with a computer (mostly graphically). It is a shame that they first only released it for a gaming console (despite that they claim it is more than a gaming platform). At least now with the new SDK we can start using it for a PC as well. Unfortunately I don’t have one – and the wife won’t allow it soon for financial reasons.

In the mean while I’m also still stuck in the 2D interfacing world, writing programs that still use the keyboard and mouse. But it isn’t all bad really. This way has served us for many years and probably will for many more. ‘If it isn’t broken don’t fix it’. Still, I can dream.