UI Nerdgasm Alert: 10/GUI is sweeping us off our fingers
10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.
Kitschy soundtrack, good voiceover and an intensely thorough demo add up to one cool re-imagining of our conventional human/computer interaction. In other words: this looks as close to the UI in Minority Report as I've ever seen. The key seems to be rewarding the user for having 10 fingers, and using all 10 to do a high number of operations in clever ways. This is really, really clever, too, just check out the name: 10/GUI. Check it out, you won't be disappointed. Well, if you hate using your fingers you might.
I don't know if this is a labor of love or merely the brainchild of four very gifted games designers, but Level Up is a really weird mash-up of gaming elements that you have probably never seen in a Flash game before.
Let's start with the premise itself: Groundhog Day meets Memento. The game experience revolves around 'days': you explore the world and the clock slowly ticks towards the evening. You bounce around picking up gems and talking to the denizens of 'Level Upland'. Eventually you feel tired and head back to ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Cam said 4:21PM on 10-15-2009
I'm... speechless...
This.. is... incredible........
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Grant Robertson said 4:48PM on 10-15-2009
I watched this yesterday in total awe. Futurelust, I has it.
ShadowFox said 4:23PM on 10-15-2009
I can honestly say, this is the first legitimately useful approach to a touch screen environment that I have ever seen. Wish I had about 10 million laying around to sponsor this idea.
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aaron said 4:40PM on 10-15-2009
WOW...just WOW. I want this.
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Patrick said 5:17PM on 10-15-2009
IMO, the problem with touchscreens is not simply that your hands are in the way of your view, but rather the constant gross smudging all over the viewable area of your screen. I am constantly wiping fingerprints/smudges off my iPhone screen with my shirt. It's a real annoyance. I am VERY glad someone recognizes that the surface you are viewing should NOT be the surface you are touching!!
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kojo87 said 11:09PM on 10-15-2009
i was thinking this also. plus you don't have to buy a ridiculously expensive touchscreen monitor either. you can keep your good old LCD
KeegdnaB said 5:27PM on 10-15-2009
Holy Tits
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edward said 6:37PM on 10-15-2009
Do want!
But I am somewhat concerned over how this would be used in multi screen setups. Especially as I have six screens.
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votre said 6:51PM on 10-15-2009
Well, there's two arms and two legs - so that's four screens. And I suppose we could use a tongue for screen number five. So for screen six that would just leave our...ummm - never mind!
Votre said 8:08PM on 10-21-2009
Well there's two arms and two legs, so that would cover four screens...
And I suppose we could use a tongue for screen five...
So that would only leave screen six, which means all that 's left for us to use is our...um...never mind.
Atanas Boev said 6:41PM on 10-15-2009
It was about freaking time!
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Vlad 092 said 9:14PM on 10-15-2009
FAPFAPFAPFAP
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alekill590 said 9:53PM on 10-15-2009
I'm sorry but i see numerous problems with this. First off all the 'new innovative' way to scroll through windows is the same exact thing as alt tab just with your fingers. I don't get how you reference anything. The reason touch screen works is because you touch what you want to do. When touching the interface surface I cant tell where my fingers are going to be when they land, sure I can see where they are when I have them on the screen but when they are off of it? With the keyboard as not part of the touch surface this becomes a even more critical design flaw. Every time I type something I have to take my hands off the touch screen. Losing where my fingers were and having to drag my hands across the screen to go to there previous location. This turns the hand into the mouse and if anything is a step backwards in my eyes.
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hazard said 11:00PM on 10-15-2009
I agree that losing a cursor position when you need to type is a critical flaw. Moreover, a mouse provides far more speed and precision than a finger and [IMO] it's much more efficient on a bio-mechanical level.
Dan said 9:51AM on 10-16-2009
alekill590: "I cant tell where my fingers are going to be" is a valid reaction, and before I used graphics tablets I had exactly the same thought. However, the success of graphics tablets shows that the practical truth is different: a user quite quickly learns an intuitive mapping between the two "spaces". (I'm referring to graphics tablets when used for absolute co-ordinates; some people use them for relative co-ordinate movements like a mouse, in which there isn't a consistent mapping.)
This presentation doesn't directly bring anything "new" but its reasoning for separating the touch interface from the screen is sound. For desktop systems this separation is probably the best way.
alekill590 said 12:47AM on 10-18-2009
I own and use a graphic tablet so I understand what you are saying. Yes you do get used to it but it is still not as efficient as a mouse.
Kelvin said 10:00PM on 10-15-2009
They should integrate the multi-touch pad into a label-less keyboard. Making it un-necessary to always move your hands between a separate keyboard and pad.
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psycros said 4:46AM on 10-16-2009
This is nothing new..I saw this two years ago, some college was doing it. I didn't find it all that compelling then, either. Their just emulating some common Windows key combos with complex gestures. I could do more with a nice six-button mouse.
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kshitij shah said 9:24AM on 10-16-2009
while the whole user interface as an idea and the problems faced with it seem to be bang on.... the one thing that does bother me is the fact that u have to have a separate keyboard... u could take a leaf from microsoft's new idea to fix that wherein the keyboard splits into 2 and is seperately there when ever u need it... obviously a mouse gesture would have to be thought to actually bring it up or maybe just another area like the global and local ares just above or below....
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schajee said 10:25AM on 10-16-2009
Our fingers have no way of letting the surface know when they're close enough to start detection, much like the tablet where close proximity of the pen allows us to control the cursor without touching. Unless you add some sort mechanism for detecting heat or humidity or any other possible radiation we might emit, I don't think this will go very far.
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