November 11, 2004
Buxton at ISWC: it's the transitions, stupid!
[I've been trip-blogging this past week but haven't had convenient net access, so I'm afraid the real-time aspects of blogging are lacking... now that I'm hooked into the wireless at DEAF04 here's some of my backlog.]
Bill Buxton's ISWC keynote made a lot of points, but the one that struck me most was derived from three basic laws:
- Moore's Law: the number of transistors that can fit in a given area will double approximately every 18 months.
- God's Law (aka the complexity barrier): the number of brain cells we have to work with remains constant.
- Buxton's Law: technology designers will continue to promise functionality proportional to Moore's Law.
The problem then is how to deliver more functionality without making the interface so unwieldy as to be completely unusable. Buxton went on to talk about the trade-off between generality and ease-of-use: the more specifically-designed an interface the easier it is to use but the more limited its scope.
The key, he argues, is to make lots of specific applications with interfaces well-suited for their particular niche. Then you don't need a single general interface, but instead can concentrate on the seamlessness and transparency of transitions between interfaces.
It's a nice way of thinking about things, especially when thinking about the combination of wearables and ubicomp (see next post).
Posted by bug to Wearable Computing at November 11, 2004 4:34 AM | TrackBackSounds very similar to what Don Norman proposes in his book, The Invisible Computer, where he says we need to move away from the PC and general-purpose computing and towards "information appliances" which do a small number of things simply. I think things like the iPod pretty much exemplify that trend. Although cell phones are a counterexample.
Posted by: Eric Nehrlich at November 11, 2004 7:34 AMAlthough cell phones are a counterexample.
That points out one of the tricky trade-offs too — we want the functionality of a full tool box but we only want to carry a Swiss-Army Knife. Ubicomp potentially could help that, but even if there's always a socket wrench lying around 80% of the time you'll want to have your Leatherman for the other 20%... and may not bother learning to use the socket wrench effectively since you're used to the Leatherman.
Posted by: Bug at November 13, 2004 9:03 AM