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Category: hci

Terminal Imagination: Doug Engelbart and Human/Computer Interface

Published March 11, 2008 by cgerrish

John Markoff’s article in the Sunday Times about PicLens Software from Cool Iris is a nice preview of the evolution of the human-computer interface. I like Doug Engelbart as much as the next guy, but you’d think we could move beyond 1968, the icon, the mouse and the window. Multi-touch, Surface, Coverflow and PicLens point the way toward other methods of navigating through collections of objects.

The point of interest for me is that PicLens was written for the web, not the desktop. And not the web of the browser window, but a space outside of that comfortable frame. Once the web becomes the primary environment for innovation in human/computer interaction, the function of the desktop changes. Even the metaphor of a “desktop” starts to make less sense.

There are many examples of terminal imaginations, visions so strong and so complete they leave no oxygen for followers. Shakespeare, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett left no room for others. (See Bloom’s Ruin the Sacred Truths) Engelbart’s vision has dominated a generation.

As the network is extended to more devices and more locations, historically this has meant a return to cruder interaction models. The introduction and success of the iPhone may have broken the pattern, it actually expands the available modes of interaction over the desktop. We are at the edge of an expansion of our interaction models; it’s generational, and digital natives will have to carry the torch.

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Preserving the random with coarse-grained filters in Twitter

Published February 23, 2008 by cgerrish

One of the frustrations people have with Twitter is its simplicity. Twitter is an authoring environment for hypertext limited to 140 characters and a method of publishing and subscribing to an almost unlimited combination of social graphs. It achieves some complexity through its API, which allows it to be mashed up with other applications. In this sense it adheres to David Weinberger’s idea of “small pieces loosely joined.”

Twitter’s simplicity means the barrier to getting started is very low, register an identity, type 140 characters and click “update.” Understanding the value of Twitter doesn’t come until later. Non-users and new users can’t actually experience Twitter. The public timeline is there as an example, but to generalize and form opinions based on this evidence would lead one solidly in the wrong direction. The public timeline could potentially be decoded, but it’s a task very similar to spending time with Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, Anna Livia Plurabelle and dream logic of Finnegan’s Wake. Or as James Joyce put it: Here comes everybody.

Veteran users of Twitter experience something very different from the public timeline. And it’s those regular users who begin to long for more controls, more features to help them refine their Twitter experience. Generally this is expressed through a desire to configure and define groups within the larger pools of the followed and the followers. By concisely defining groups a Twitter user could get exactly what she wanted.

But getting “exactly what you want” is exactly what you don’t want. Fine grained controls and filters are generally used to focus on common interests and concerns. The result is pre-defining the message flow you receive, creating an echo chamber. Random and negative feedback have an important role the health and stability of any dynamic organic system. When Twitter only brings you what you expect, it loses its value.

Twitter will grow new features, all applications do. But what if, rather than think in terms of precision, exactness and clarity; we thought of coarseness, randomness and ambiguity. What kind of coarse grained filters would preserve the random in a users Twitter stream? The seed for this rumination was inspired by a conversation on @Newsgang Live about squelch as metaphor for filtering Twitter streams. Imagine filtering the stream based on frequency of tweets, or location of tweets. By tuning into quadrants of the Twitterverse with coarse-grained filters new voices could be discovered. So often we think in terms of signal versus noise, but when we think of noise perhaps we should take a lesson, and listen with the zen ears of John Cage.

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MSFT-YHOO: People get ready, a change is gonna come…

Published February 9, 2008 by cgerrish

As someone trapped in the locked down world of enterprise software during the working day, I often think about the nature and rationale for the lock. Generally, people adapt to whatever environment they’re in, and I’ve adapted to the limited, crippled environment in which I have to get work done.

More and more, applications that used to be written in-house are being brought in from the outside, particularly around employee benefits, expense tracking and performance reviews. These are general business functions where outside shops always provide a better software solution than the in-house one. All of these vendor provided solutions are Web-based and are integrated into corporate network identity management systems. In many cases, employee data is stored with the outside vendor. This is a trend that will only accelerate.

One of the locks on the corporate desktop is Microsoft. MS Office rules the roost, it’s the conduit through which all work and communication occurs. A consequence of the lockdown is that change and innovation happens at a very slow rate. In part, this is due to the installed software model of most corporate desktops. Managing tens of thousands of geographically dispersed desktop computers is a highly complex task. Complexity is reduced by simplifying the systems, and eliminating outside influences.

Imagine how much cost and complexity could be reduced if all enterprise applications were delivered via the web. The economics dictate that installed corporate applications must migrate to the web. Or to quote Steve Gillmor from 2005, Office is dead. Some version of this story is at the bottom of the business case for Ray Ozzie’s Office Live. Many have made the case that this software delivery model only makes sense for the SOHO market. Actually it makes even more sense for very large corporations.

So how does this relate to Yahoo? Years of operating in the highly constrained enterprise environment has drawn the boundaries of Microsoft’s imagination. Microsoft needs Yahoo to teach it how to dance to that crazy new music all the kids dig. Once enterprise applications are delivered via the web, the speed of innovation will increase. The surrounding web-based consumer application space is already filled with more powerful tools than the enterprise, particularly in the area of collaboration and knowledge management. Flickr and Delicious are tremendous knowledge management tools. Ray Ozzie sees the change is gonna come, and makes the big move that will help them get ready.

Nicholas Carr’s Big Switch makes the case for the move from the hard drive to the cloud and Matt Ritchtel’s piece in today’s NY Times summarizes. Can Microsoft trade in its lead boots for a new set of led boots? Perhaps Curtis Mayfield and Sam Cooke said it best: People get ready, a change is gonna come.

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Yahoo: This is Your Brain on Music

Published January 9, 2008 by cgerrish

This new MP3 player from Yahoo is a beautiful thing. It’s early yet, but this is the kind widget that will bring Yahoo back into the center of things. Arrington says they have some big plans for music, and music is a great place to start. And it all goes back to this blog post by Ian Rogers with the memorable quote: “Inconvenience doesn’t scale.”The player is written as unobtrusive javascript, so it’s simple to add to a page. It recognizes MP3 links and layers itself over the layout. I need to play with it a little more, but it looks like a very well thought out implementation.The reason to focus on music? Music changed Apple Computer to Apple. It introduced millions of users to Apple software and Macintosh. If Yahoo can get some things right with music, it will go a long way. To understand the elemental force of music, read “This is Your Brain on Music.” 

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