Mo' screens = mo' happiness
Michael Rudolph
michael.rudolph at gmail.com
Tue May 13 20:08:00 CEST 2008
Hello everyone,
I'm Michael Rudolph. You may remember me from such mailinglist threads
as "User research: your way to happiness" and "Stay happy while logging
off". ;-)
I'd like to comment on Aaron's last blogpost.
http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2008/05/i-dont-want-keyboard-i-want-screen.html
And I'd like to do it here, since my comments are mainly plasma related.
Right at the beginning you write about hardware interactions; how the
system reacts to a mouse being attached and hides or displays a
touchpad area accordingly. While I'm a huge fan of hardware
interactions and sincerely hope that we will soon make better use of
the rich information these interactions provide, I don't really like
that particular example. Because when I'm having dual multi-touch input
devices, I'll hopefully not need a mouse ever again.
It seems to me like a milk man, who's struggling everyday, because he's
delivering his milk on a ramshackle, little cart, that he's towing
across town with his bicycle. And when he is finally able to afford a
small lorry to ease his work, he's just affixing the little cart to his
new automobile, instead of putting his milk onto the lorry.
I was a total pain in the ..., while you were doing the user research in
Milan, because I hoped to create some awareness for exactly those kinds
of mistakes. One can (actually: must) forget everything one knows about
current user interfaces (some call that: beginner's mind), to be able
to create something that is better. Almost everything in our current
user interfaces is tailored towards mice, since mice were the only
input method we had to navigate through graphical user interfaces. Now,
as we become increasingly independent of mice, we need to be aware of
the fact, that we need to replace everything "mouse related" in our
user interfaces, not just the actual device, but all interaction
patterns, that are there only because of mice anyway.
This is just a very minor point, but I wanted to say it still, just to
remind you, that whenever you need a little smart ass, I'll be there
for you. :-)
And I will not add insult to injury and will therefore not mention, that
Apple is doing exactly the right thing, in not bringing a mac tablet to
the market, because OS X is just not ready for touch input. And merely
using your finger to replace a mouse is such a redmond-thing to do.
But, as I said, I will not mention that. :-)
michael
More information about the Panel-devel
mailing list