king talk

Gary Flake from Microsoft research delivered a fascinating demo of »Microsoft Pivot«, an experimental technology which focuses on browsing collections of content and pages, rather than individual pieces of content.  It looks like if the Zooming User Interface (ZUI) is based on the idea of Microsoft‘s Photosynth technology which was presented by Blaise Aguera three years ago. The concept of viewing, filtering and pivoting collections of web pages based on various attributes pulled from the content represents an exciting possible future state for web browsing. I am very curious to see how this technology evolves, and whether this type of application could be used to create views of custom large data sets, spot patterns and identify actions.  I also wonder how long it will be before some of this functionality emerges directly within Bing – exciting times!

We wanted to get some feedback on our iScraper application. So we grabbed a video camera, an iPhone and went to Marienplatz, the central spot in Munich. See iScraper in action in the video!

As we were watching a video on youtube about »Imaging the 10th Dimension«, an animation illustrating the concepts from chapter one of the book »Imagining the Tenth Dimension – a new way of thinking about time and space« by Rob Bryanton, we began to think about the consequences for user interface design and interaction design. These are the temporary results:

We start with with a single dot. We may also call it a pixel of the screen design. Like the »point« we know from geometry, it has no size and no dimension. It’s just an imaginary idea that indicates a position in a system.

A second dot can be used to indicate a different position – creating the first dimension, a line joining any two points. The length of the line is the distance between its ends, its linear extent as measured from end to end. A one dimensional object has length only, no width or depth.

The line was extended to a second dimensional object by linking the duplicated line with a new lines in height. This would be a flat interface or a flat element of the interface like a 2 dimensional icon. The impression of 3D can arise if for example a fotorealistic icon has a gradient. Some call that 2,5D effect »pseudo-3D«.

Imaging the third dimension is the easiest for us because every moment of our lives that is what we’re in. A 2D object becomes a 3D object by adding depth. Most 3D interface designs are displayed on two dimensional displays, being a contradictory to each other, because only two dimensions of this virtual 3D world can be controlled via mouse or touch. Only a special device like 3D connexion’s SpaceNavigator can manipulate all 6 degrees of freedom. Most of the time we see interface approaches like e.g. »Cover Flow« which is displayed as a three dimensional objects that can be controlled only at one axis.

The first three dimensions can be described as length, width and depth. To the fourth dimension – duration – can be assigned as the new factor. If we think of ourselves as we were one minute ago, and then imagine ourselves as we are at this moment, the line we could draw from the »one-minute-ago version« to the current version would be a line in the fourth dimension. The 4th dimension in the context of interface design could be an animation of a screen saver or an introductional video at the start of a program. The user can only see how an object is changing over a certain period of time.

Inside the 5th dimension, time is not a linear process from A to B. The user has impact on the timeline to influence the action. The changes that will be made can change the current state of the interface mode. An example for that everday interaction is the act of entering a new subitem within menu structure.

The 6th dimension can be seen as the dimension of multitasking. Parallel actions running at the same time while the user has only the possibility to choose one. A good example for this dimension are the tabs of your browser, which allows you to switch between different websites.

The next possible dimension is the 7th, but this one is going to be more abstract. It treats all applications and its possible tasks of the virtual world as one big dot. I haven’t found a better definition which makes sense, but maybe you have one?