> With an entire body at your command, do you seriously think the Future Of Interaction should be a single finger?
What if you don't have an entire body at your command?
The plus side of “pictures behind glass” is that it's a fairly well standardized interface — the software has to adapt to that homogenized hardware, instead of you fighting to adapt to the hardware. (Or, more accurately, you adapt to it once, instead of once for every type of object you want to interact with.)
If interactive experiences all start to require a good range of motion, bodily sensitivity, and ability to instinctively interpret the interface, there's a risk it could be incredibly alienating for many. Unless we design with that consideration from day one, it could make adaptivity harder than it already is.
I went looking for Bret Victor's take on this question because I was certain he would have thought of this already. So far I only found this:
“Channeling all interaction through a single finger is like restricting all literature to Dr Seuss's vocabulary. Yes, it's much more accessible, both to children and to a small set of disabled adults. But a fully-functioning adult human being deserves so much more.”
I find it sad to read that. Those with access issues deserve so much more too. There's already a huge access gap. If we're going to champion new modes of interaction, we should fight hard not to make the gap bigger still.
This may be controversial view, but I'm with Bret Victor on this. Of course, we should do as much as possible to make everything accessible to everyone. But we should not strive for a single universal interface that's accessible to all, because that's sacrificing both the best and the average case for the worst case.
Consider books and vision loss. The tried-and-true solution to make books accessible is printing them in Braille. But nobody in their right mind would be suggesting we should only ever print books in Braille, because then it's equally accessible. It would be more "fair", but it would also be a ridiculous waste for the 99.5% of the world's population[0].
If we were to equalize all our technology and processes across all accessibility issues, our civilization would collapse - it would mean nothing depending on body motion, on body sensitivity, sight, sound, speech, taste, pain. The union of all existing disabilities is a life of a rock.
So since we can't really have a truly universal interface[1], we may as well give up on trying to design technology to the lowest common denominator, losing most of the benefits it gives, and instead design it to play to the strengths of human body. Fallback options should be available where possible, but at some point we have to understand that until medical technology homogenizes our bodies, not everyone will be equally suitable to every task.
(And I say that as someone who has always dreamed of being a pilot or an astronaut, but for whom that career path was cut off by large nearsightedness early in teenage years.)
I want someone with the skills of Brett Victor to solve the problem of visualization and maintenance tools for change over time.
You solve that problem and there's a world open to you for using things other than flat text files as the system of record.
Without those tools, it's all talk. If we're lucky. If we're not lucky it's a death march toward a horrible, horrible boondoggles.
We are already trying to visualize four (or more) dimensional code with 2.5D projections (length, width, and a few colors). You give me a tool that can use 3 or 3.5 dimensions and the world opens up to us.
What if you don't have an entire body at your command?
The plus side of “pictures behind glass” is that it's a fairly well standardized interface — the software has to adapt to that homogenized hardware, instead of you fighting to adapt to the hardware. (Or, more accurately, you adapt to it once, instead of once for every type of object you want to interact with.)
If interactive experiences all start to require a good range of motion, bodily sensitivity, and ability to instinctively interpret the interface, there's a risk it could be incredibly alienating for many. Unless we design with that consideration from day one, it could make adaptivity harder than it already is.
I went looking for Bret Victor's take on this question because I was certain he would have thought of this already. So far I only found this:
“Channeling all interaction through a single finger is like restricting all literature to Dr Seuss's vocabulary. Yes, it's much more accessible, both to children and to a small set of disabled adults. But a fully-functioning adult human being deserves so much more.”
http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...
I find it sad to read that. Those with access issues deserve so much more too. There's already a huge access gap. If we're going to champion new modes of interaction, we should fight hard not to make the gap bigger still.