by Kevin Walker
1999

Best panel I've ever attended at any conference: "Natural and Invisible Human Interfaces." I don't know why they differentiate between papers, panels, courses and sketches, because they're all the same -- one speaker after another gets up, presents their work, maybe there's time for a few questions at the end. This one was the same way, except that the speakers were really, really good.

Hiroshi Ishii of MIT has done some interesting experiments with novel interfaces, such as pinwheels that spin based on net activity -- a "wind of bits" is a good analogy. He's also done similar things with water -- making real the metaphorical trickle to a flow of bits.

Another experiment uses bottles as containers of information, in this case music. Three bottles sit on a table; open one and you get a pre-recorded piano, another, drums, and so on. Not the most compelling implementation, but inspired by his mother -- it was an interface she could understand, since she had opened countless bottles of soy sauce in his youth. You open a container to get at what's inside.

He also has created a "clearboard," like a whiteboard or blackboard, except like a piece of glass -- you can see another person sitting opposite you. Only, they're remotely located, and everything they write isn't reversed on your side of the board.

Clark Dodsworth (Osage Associates) had recently visited the new Universal "Islands of Adventure" in Orlando, and professed it the theme park of the future -- it's filled with sensors both for tracking of, and interaction with, visitors. Wired places like this and Sony's new Metreon in San Francisco are the destinations of the future, he says, and they're stealing the audiences away from places like science museums.

He singled out science museums in particular, for their poor use of technology. "Kiosk," he says, is a four-letter word. I couldn't agree more. Our museum has been one of the worst offenders, and we're slowly changing that. They do have their place -- as interactive labels, or as sit-down resource stations. But as you know, we're slowly making the computers disappear, and making the exhibitions and objects come alive.

Dodsworth views just about everything as an interface, and he held up the two-handed scythe as having an ideal one. (He even had a Grim Reaper walk out and hand him one -- talk about good presentation skills.) A videotaped user test showed that most people understood how to use the device within ten seconds. The device is beautiful and assymetrical. Appreciating beauty, he says, is a human emotional response, and is a sign that someone cares about this thing. Symmetry and rectilinearity are flags to bad ergonomic design. If the user needs any hints as to how to use the thing, the hints should be inherent in the design.

Caleb Chung (Giving Toys, Inc.) is as chatty and childlike as the most famous of his inventions, the Furbie. He showed pencil sketches for the thing, which he had originally designed without fur. (His wife suggested the fur.) He showed video of various toys he'd designed, some of which made it to market, some not. He said to imagine yourself as a child, playing with your favorite toy. Imagine the toy not as it was, but with all the powers you imagined it to have. That, he said, is the toy of the future. It's easier to make something fun smart, than to make something smart fun, he said. Imagine, also, toys that teach -- that listen more than they tell, that suggest subtly and teach incrementally. He echoed the other panelists: the computer as we know it has a poor interface.

Bill Buxton (Univ. of Toronto and Alias/Wavefront) picked up this thread by showing a picture of a Cuisinart. Do you use this device to make all your meals? It does it all, after all. The computer, he says, is like a digital Cuisinart, poorly positioned as a general-purpose, do-it-all machine. "Interface design," he says, is mispronounced -- it should be "in-your-face design," and he works to get the design out of your face -- to focus users on the task, not the tool. The tool should be an extension of the body, or mind, and an interface is "transparent" when you don't think about the computer.

Buxton often asks programmers and designers to draw a computer. Most of the time, what they draw is a mouse, keyboard and monitor -- not the CPU. These things are what we know as a computer. Furthermore, he said, it's not 1982 anymore -- the GUI must go!

He picked up Ishii's water analogy by showing a kitchen sink, bathroom sink, and shop sink. You recognize immediately which room each of them lives in. Like water, the Internet flows into our homes through a fat set of pipes, which we control the flow of, and when used improperly, they can fill our house with crap.

Buxton joined The Dark Side (the commercial world) in order, he says, to make a difference -- to bring good ideas into the marketplace. And he has lots of good ideas. (He retains his academic credentials.)

He mentioned some interesting new products, such as the Nikon Coolpix 300. There is a camera made in Israel called the 3DV Z-Cam, which he saw at NAB. This amazing camera combines video with some sort of depth sensor, so that you can simultaneously capture a video image and 3D data. This is especially handy for shooting people -- real-time compositing, iwith no bluescreen! He showed a test using the camera, capturing into Alias, in which a particle animation was composited around a person, the background dropped out, all without any post-production. It brings "in-camera editing" a whole new meaning. Tools like this, he said, will make "post" activities "pre" activities.

That seemed to be the theme of the conference -- simple ideas, finally being implemented.