The BumpTop desktop – a usable interface?
Jeremy and Steve asked me to write something about the BumpTop desktop, which was introduced a while ago but shows a lot of promise (see the the video below). To be honest, I’m suffering a little from fanboy-fatigue, in that there is so much cool stuff coming out and I feel like I would just be repeating what everyone else has already said. Therefore, I’ll let you be the judge. Watch the video, and more words from me after that.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0ODskdEPnQ]
I’m personally quite impressed by this, though the danger is really that it comes to look like Al Gore’s desktop, a problem some (including me) suffer from. Before writing this post, I did a little research on design, and particularly designing for interaction, as I think that is a vital ingredient software today is often missing. I mean, we really are generally stuck in a 2-dimensional environment and there doesn’t seem to be much useful innovation.
Note the ‘useful,’ as I think there is some innovation, but not all of it really makes a difference. The Compiz/Beryl looks very fluid, but so far fluidity in real life seems only useful in a shower and very messy in other situations. The Jeffrey Han-video is very hypnotic, with its cool Kruder and Dorfmeister-soundtrack, but equally hypnotic is the scene in star-wars, where Luke flies through the death-star trying to hit that one vulnerable spot. It’s cool, but is it useful? Note that I’m not even mentioning Windows or OSX. But maybe I’m over-sceptical.
Designing for interaction. An intriguing concept. According to Bruce Tognazzini, designer extraordinaire, there are a number of rules or rather principles that govern designing software that makes sense to a user. These are:
- Anticipation: of the needs of the users, rather than making him look for them
- Autonomy: to learn and create personalised environments
- Color Blindness: ca. 10% of people suffer from this
- Consistency: “Make objects consistent with their behavior. Make objects that act differently look different.”
- Defaults: preset behaviours, which can easily be changed to fit a user’s needs
- Efficiency of the User: “Look at the user’s productivity, not the computer’s”
- Explorable Interfaces: giving users the freedom to dig deep, while not forgetting the ‘undo’ function
- Fitts’ Law: “the time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target.” More here.
- Human Interface Objects: which we as humans can understand, perceive, and interact with in a to-us logical way.
- Latency Reduction: because waiting sucks.
- Learnability: by creating functions both easy to understand and useful.
- Metaphors, Use of: are a good way to make complex operations understandable to the user.
- Protect Users’ Work: still not happening properly today.
- Readability: also for older people
- Track State: so that people who also live in the real world (everyone I hope) can come back to the same place they left off.
- Visible Navigation: reduce it to a minimum and make what is left clear and natural.
You can read the full, written in 2003, text here.
So does all this apply to the BumpTop desktop? Too early to say, and some of it will probably be out of the developers’ control. I still think, while holding my fanboy’ism back, that this is a step in the right direction: designing interfaces that are compatible with the way we interact with the real world.
What do you think, is BumpTop moving in the right direction? Would you like to see more or something entirely different? Let us know in the comments.
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The “market” will judge, Vincent, but my call is that a number of elements from Bumbtop will eventually be included in common operating systems.