John Underkoffler points to the future of UI

[August]

This 15 minute talk on the future of User Interfaces was given at the TED talks this February. The video was posted in June at
http://www.ted.com/talks/john_underkoffler_drive_3d_data_with_a_gesture.html

The presenter is part of an R&D group at MIT who created the 3D UI in then movie Minority Report based on research work they had already been doing.

When Bill Gates, in the audience, asked "When?", John estimated five years for this to be standard on all new computer systems. Such predictions have a way of being way off, in either direction, but the possibilities for 3D interfaces for all of cumputing have implications for how we might see the future of SketchUp.

Here's a short excerpt that sets the stage:

"Today $84.97 at Best Buy buys you more graphics power than you could have gotten for a million bucks from SGI only a decade ago. ... we've got that incredible ramp up ... [but] we've forgotten to invent new interfaces.

"... we've seen, in recent years, a lot of change in the regard. And people are starting to wake up about that. So what happens next?

"The problem, as we see it, has to do with a single, simple word, "space" or a single, simple phrase, "real world geometry." Computers and the programming languages that we talk to them in, that we teach them in, are hideously insensate when it comes to space. They don't understand real world space. It's a funny thing because the rest of us occupy it quite frequently and quite well.

"So what happens if you start to explain space to them? One thing you might get is something like the Luminous Room. The Luminous Room is a system in which it's considered input and output spaces are co-located.

"So you've got an interface that has no interface. You operate the world as you operate the real world, which is to say, with your hands. Similarly, a digital wind tunnel with digital wind flowing from right to left. Not that remarkable in a sense; we didn't invent the mathematics. But if you displayed that on a CRT or flat panel display, it would be meaningless to hold up an arbitrary object, a real world object in that. Here, the real world merges with the simulation." [In the video, the wind-tunnel lights flow around the object placed on the table.]

"And finally, to pull out all the stops, this is a system called Urp, for urban planners, in which we give architects and urban planners back the models that we confiscated when we insisted that they use CAD systems. And we make the machine meet them half way. It projects down digital shadows, as you see here. [The wireframe model on the table has simulated shadows.] And if you introduce tools like this inverse clock, [Made of cardboard with colored spots on it] then you can control the sun's position in the sky. That's 8:00 AM shadows. They get a little shorter at 9:00 AM. [Moving the cardboard clock hand changes the projected shadows.] There you are, swinging the sun around."

When I saw that part, I knew I had to share it with SketchUp folks.

From there John proceeds to describe how the MIT project folks got involved with the film and to demo the Minority Report UI on stage, minus the holographic display. Definitely worth your time.

Also, there are subtitles in English and an interactive transcript: click on a phrase in the text and go right to that spot in the video.

Enjoy,
August

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