[IxDA Discuss] Bumptop

[David Malouf]

On 2/28/07, pauric <radiorental at gmail.com> wrote:
> Good questions.  I dont see this limited to tablets and I think the
> designers have had their eye on the bigger picture too.  Its a desktop
> interaction paradigm and therefor has the potential to be platform
> independent.  I feel they are very much tied to currently available input
> devices and I see them being released from this constraint with multitouch.

Actually, they specific speak of "pen" as the primary I/O device, so I
think dost might be extrapolating a bit too much.

>
> Dave: "Is there always a keyboard?"
> Pauric: No, but the demo clearly works through icon manipulation, icons
> generally represent documents, documents invariably require a keyboard,
> physical or virtual, at some point - therefor the pen falls over.  That said
> I've had minimal time on tablets and could quite well be wrong.

Yup, lots of Tablet programs exist with objects that are manipulated
on a standard desktop. One of the problems though is that a mouse is
not available or not connected and so it is hard to manipulate
standard icons the way we would with a mouse. Though people "learn" to
deal. But a keyboard is a presumption for manipulating documents. I.e.
I could have an application that manages objects but does not create
or edit them. OR! I create objects that are tablet or other device
intensive such as images, drawing schematics, etc. that are less
keyboard reliant. Tablets are fun, I suggest getting exposure.

>
> Dave: "I would suggest that you aren't doing design."
> Pauric: I would say you are 100% right.  Design is part of what I/we do.  At
> a more complete level I'd consider myself an enabler.  I take pure Design +
> real Constraints and produce something that lets users accomplish work.

What I was saying was a bit "deeper". If you are only "enabling" and
dealing with constraints you are probably missing the bigger
opportunity that design affords. Yes! my final products deal in
constraints, but how I get there is to work in the stratosphere for a
spell (spells vary in time depending on project) and then come down to
earth with ideas that I wouldn't have gained if I didn't get giddy
from the lack of O2.

Not that you are doing this Pauric, but I find that most UX processes
don't do "design" of this sort, but are so encumbered by "engineering"
centric processes like "agile" and "RUP" that they can never get to
doing the types of design that are afforded within either studios
(consultancies) and ID shops.

Of course one could say that REAL design changes the presumed constraints. ;)

-- dave


-- 
David Malouf
http://synapticburn.com/
http://ixda.org/
http://motorola.com/