Minority Report was a breakthrough in fictional design of interactive technology back in 2002. The vision for Human Computer Interaction in the film has since guided the tech community’s attempts to match the capabilities shown by Tom Cruise’s magic gloves.

Oblong.com is making headway in achieving the level of interaction and pure “wow” that could easily pass for magic in many parts of the world.

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

The only drawback with the obvious brilliance of this interface is that the complexity of the tasks being demonstrated is specific to the gesture/interaction performed. The skills and knowledge to acquire a productive level of use would probably take years to learn. The guys in Oblong and hopefully here in Tricycle too will do a lot of the “hard yards” now to design the “conventions” and “protocols” that will guide the universal language of Gesture Driven Input.

Keep up the good work guys, its going to take a while though!

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It arrived yesterday in the post. Tired, travelled but bursting to be read. Jon Kolko’s Thoughts on Interaction Design.

Jon is a Professor of Interaction and Industrial Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design. I say Jon like I know the man. I don’t. But after reading a very small scintilla of his work, I wish I did. I like his take on Interaction Design. In fact, I like his take on Design (with a capital D). Fullstop.

As he says himself, the primary purpose of the book is to better define Interaction Design and in doing so assure ‘practicing Interaction Designers that they are not, in fact simply tools to be used in the cleanup phases of a technology-centreed project’ and offer practicioners ‘the vocabulary necessary to justify their existence to other team members’.

Jon asserts that Design is language and that Interaction Design is the creation of a dialogue between a human and a product, service or system. This dialogue is both physical and emotional. It manifests itself in form, function and technology. It unfolds over time and is usually located in the world of behaviour. Thus Interaction Designers can be perceived as shapers of behaviour. They speak both form and words at once. They construct a compelling argument and invite the user to share in their work - and hopefully in a dialogue that is ’subtle, lasting and intuitive’.

These are only some of the thoughts Jon elicits in the introduction of the book. There are many more and I’ll come back to you with the best of them once I have had time to digest them myself.

Also, the design of the book itself, is very attractive. And I’m a man that’s into my paper and fonts.

http://www.thoughtsoninteraction.com/

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