Mo' screens = mo' happiness

[Michael Rudolph]

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