Improving the human-computer interface
The way that we interface with computers hasn’t changed much since the invention of the mouse and the graphical user interface. I wrote several months ago:
WIMP stands for windows, icons, menus, pointing device. It is the way computer interfaces have been constructed since the Alto system was first packaged at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. First Apple and then Microsoft adopted WIMP and it is the way we are still doing things nearly four decades later. It is a prime example of how static the basic setup of the PC has been.
However, touch is becoming more important and other methods of interfacing are being investigated as well. ScienceDaily reports on a European project investigating how the computer interface can be improved:
The EU-funded OpenInterface (OI) project took as its starting point the many interaction devices currently available – touch screens, motion sensors, speech recognisers and many others – and sought to create an open source development framework capable of quickly and simply supporting the design and development of new user interfaces by mixing and matching different types of input device and modality.
No breakthroughs yet but work continues.
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.