Trends in Interface Designs (1999 and earlier)AutoPC ready for road
According to a young Sarasota-based company called Intelliworxx Inc., you will be able to buy a luxury car equipped with this CarPC within the next three months. Intelliworxx, only 11/2 years old, is sitting on two eye-popping products -- the CarPC, which is about to become an option on luxury cars, and the VoiceTablet, a Pentium II-based computer the size of a laptop that, like the CarPC, works from voice commands. (1999-12-27)Chunking & Phrasing and the Design of Human-Computer Dialogues
The design of the syntax has a major effect on the quality of the user interface of an interactive system. It affects learnability, the frequency and nature of user errors, the retention of skills (as with non-regular users) and the speed of task performance. A major problem for users is the cognitive load imposed by remembering the tokens of a command and their order. (1999-12-27)Desperately Seeking: Helping Hands and Human Touch
Information Brokering, new Forms of Using Computers, Agency, and Software Agents in Tomorrow's Online Marketplace: An Assessment of Current and Future Developments (1999-12-27)A Search Engine That Knows What You Mean
The key technology behind Oingo's meaning-based search (which is still in beta-testing) is a massive lexicon that keeps track of the meanings and associations of any given word. It's now up to 250,000 terms and growing. Oingo's lexicon is much more comprehensive, than say, a dictionary, which would probably contain a definition for "backstreet", but probably not the definition that would satisfy most Internet searchers. (1999-11-28)Lifestreams™ Office
According to the web site description "Lifestreams™ Office organizes all your information in visual streams that reflect the way you work. Streams are like stacks on your desk. Lifestreams™ Office organizes the stacks for you, instantly and automatically, and adds new documents as they are created, received or revised. (1999-11-28)Programming by Example web site
Often, in computer interfaces, users wind up doing the same or similar sequences of operations over and over again in different situations. But if computers are so good at repetition, why is it that the users are the ones who keep repeating things? Programming by example [or "programming by demonstration"*] is a technique for teaching the computer new behavior by demonstrating actions on concrete examples. The system records user actions and generalizes a program that can be used in new examples. (1999-11-28)Tomorrow's Desktop
According to this Feed Magazine article "If our screens have become more user-friendly over the past 10 years, they're still trapped in conceptual boxes that were designed a quarter century ago. It's enough to make you think we're primed for another interface revolution after all." (1999-11-15)Organization Wide Learning (OWL),
According to Mitre Corporation, "OWL software augments and assists the natural social process of people learning from each other. When individual users ask OWL which software functionality they should learn next, OWL makes recommendations based on the activities of their peers. OWL pools users' knowledge and individualizes instruction. It observes the applications used by people and logs the functions used. By comparing each person's knowledge to the pooled knowledge of their peers, OWL can recommend the most valuable new features to each person, selecting those of proven utility from hundreds of features." (1999-11-07)Flyswat
According to the promotional material on the flyswat web site " While browsing the Web using Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher, flyswat creates flyconTM links within the text of the web page that will take you directly to related information elsewhere on the Web. The flycon links update continuously as you surf from page to page, allowing you to effortlessly view and retrieve information from deep within the Web, without leaving the page. Clicking on a flycon link raises a pop-up menu which lists information link types. Examples of link types are: Company Profile, Stock Quote, Related Books, etc. Clicking on a link type takes you directly to additional information."It's an interesting technology, but it add more links to information that for many users may simply not be that useful. It will add links to names of well know people, to cities and countries. Flyswat added a hyperlink to my name but when I followed the link I got information on the recording artist Bill Miller. (1999-11-07)
Talking 'bout a computer revolution
According to this article "Speech recognition technology promises to transform how we interact with computers -- or turn us all into mindless gibbering automatons." It examines the current state of speech recognition technology and concludes that more progress is still required before this technology is ready for everyday use. (1999-11-10)Natural Human Computing
Researchers have developed a computer algorithm that imitates a fundamental characteristic of human intelligence –- the ability to distinguish patterns within large amounts of data, text, or images. The program, called an algorithm for non-negative matrix factorization, could one day lead to faster and more accurate video conferencing, data storage and transmission, and web searches, scientists said. (1999-11-10)Designing the Invisible Computer
This New York Times article answers the questions "..'when computers are everywhere, what will the information they display look like? Will it be elegant or informal? Or will it be so integrated into our activities that we see, well, nothin'? (1999-11-10)Talking around the Web becomes a reality
According to this InfoWorld news report " As the number of users browsing the Web, using e-mail, and sending instant messages surpasses the number of people using word processors, voice-technology companies are ramping up their efforts. Next month, Lernout & Hauspie (L&H), one of the three leading voice-technology software developers, will introduce Now You're Talking on the Web, a $50 software package that will allow users to dictate to Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, and other e-mail packages, as well as letting users input Web links and instant messages." (1999-09-18)Intel CEO: PCs Still Unfriendly
In this Wired News article, Craig Barrett, CEO Of Intel is quoted as saying "...that computing is still too difficult a chore for even advanced users. Computing must be adapted to users, not the other way around." (1999-09-05)Simpler PCs to debut for the holidays
This CNet Story describes the features PC manufacturers are adding to try to make PC's more usable. The story reports that "In focus groups, Intel has found that one of the more popular PCs with consumers are the "all-in-one" flat panel computers such as NEC's Z1..." (1999-09-05)Component Architecture
According to this article "It is unusual to find a consensus among vendors of operating systems, development tools, and database products, but there is broad agreement that component-based development (CBD) is quickly becoming the dominant model for software development." As a paradigm, CBD will supplant earlier programming archetypes, such as structured programming and object-oriented programming, as the approach most likely to yield significant productivity and reusability benefits." (1999-08-15)Personalized Information Environments
According to the authors of this paper "A Personalized Information Environment or "PIE" is a conceptual architecture that allows unified, highly customizable access to distributed information resources by providing users the tools to compose personalized collections from a palette of information resources. The architecture also provides for the efficient exchange of inter-resource meta-information like collection statistics in order to maximize retrieval effectiveness." (1999-07-25)Talking to the Web
PC Magazine asked several leading research about the future of the web. Some emphasized the importance of speech recognition. But, Ben Shneiderman, director of the University of Maryland Human Computer Interaction Laboratory contends that "What's needed are systems that are comprehensible to users. People want computers that are consistent, predictable, and controllable". (1999-07-13)A Change of Interface
This CIO article reports on the use of speech recognition software in call centers. According to the article: "Speech recognition, a technology whose time seems to have arrived, now handles 56 percent of 120,000 daily calls with a better than 90 percent.." at a Sears call center. (1999-06-20)Andreessen singles out consumers as key to Web future
Netscape's chief technologist Marc Andreessen seems to be getting it. According to this InfoWorld article Andreessen "... said the only things that resonate with consumers are things that make their lives easier and help get things done faster, such as VCRs, microwaves, cell phones, and WalMarts. He said computing needs to have as simplistic a user interface as television for it to hit consumers." (1999-06-01)Beyond the Desktop
This Feed Magazine article contains some descriptions of future interface designs from experts like Bruce Tognazzini. (Sep-07-97)Designing HotJava Views
This white paper describes the design of the HotJava views Network Computer desktop. The designers decided to change the windows desktop paradigm and created a desktop that is like a web browser. (Nov-28-97)Even Easier PCs
This PC Magazine articles describes some of Microsoft's programs and initiatives to make PC even easier to use. (1999-06-01)Excerpts from Don Norman's New Book
This site contains excerpts from Don Norman's new book "The Invisible Computer". The book will be available in the Fall of 1998. The book talks about the life cycle of Technology and the transition from technology centered designs to human-centered designs. (Mar-03-98).Future Technology
This PC Magazine articles is a little thin on content and reflects the dominant view that technological development, rather than user interface design, will shape the future of computer technology. This article contains links to other related future technology articles. (1999-06-01)More than Screen Deep
In response to a request from the National Science Foundation, the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) of the National Research Council convened a steering committee to evaluate and suggest fruitful directions for progress in user interfaces to computing and communications systems. This website and the report "More than Screen Deep: Toward Every-Citizen Interfaces to the Nation's Information Infrastructure" is the result of that work. This site contains the full text of the report. It also contains the full text of the position papers from interface design experts like Terry Winograd, Bruce Tognazzini and Ben Shneiderman.The New User Interface
This Byte Magazine article describes the current development of HTML and Java based user interfaces for Network Computers. For example, with the recent versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Communicator, you can create an HTML based desktop interface that will lay on top of or replace your operating systems desktop interface. With this feature you could create a task oriented interface to replace the operating system's application oriented interface. (Sep-07-97)SAP puts a kinder, gentler face on business applications
According to this InfoWorld news story, SAP is in the process of developing a new and more user friendly version of their enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, The EnjoySAP website has some screen shots of the new interface. (Mar-20-99)Web Applications are the Next Logical Step
According to this article "Web applications are applications that run on a server and use the Web browser as the prime interface." The article examines some of the tools, techniques and implications for developing web applications. (Jan-01-99)Trends in Interface Design - Links from 2000