This is a cheap, scalable multi-touch and pressure-sensitive computer screen interface that may spell the end of point-and-click. 

The future use of multi-touch technology is expected to rapidly become common place. For example, touch screen telephones are expected to increase from 200,000 shipped in 2006, to 21 million in 2012.

While Touch sensing is commonplace for single points of contact, Multi-Touch systems enables a user to interact with a system with more than one finger at a time, allowing for the use of both hands along with chording gestures. These kinds of interactions hold tremendous potential for advances in efficiency, usability, and intuitiveness. Multi-Touch systems are inherently also able to accommodate multiple users simultaneously, which is especially useful for collaborative scenarios such as interactive walls and tabletops.

Anand Agarawala presents BumpTop, a user interface that takes the usual desktop metaphor to a glorious, 3-D extreme, transforming file navigation into a freewheeling playground of crumpled documents and clipping-covered “walls.”

Although visually stimulating and striking, this is an example of a metaphor taken to the extreme at its own peril. I do feel it is moving in the right direction, but there is not enough substance to sustain a user for an extended period of time.

Interesting idea. It could certainly be implemented as an application for the Mac (particularly with Leopard), and I presume Windows. Does it really get us anywhere. I have maybe 20,000 files on my hard drive, not counting the OS stuff.
A multi-touch aproach with more real 3D effects sems to me to be a lot better.

Even better, let’s get speech recognition to really work.

Interface designer, software developer, inventor, and nerdcore hip-hopper Anand Agarawala brings a welcome sense of expressiveness to the dusty desktop interface. His BumpTop software applies a 3D metaphor and rough-and-tumble interactivity that delights anyone who sees it in action.

In addition to its raw play-with-me fun , BumpTop is also an inspiring example of unconventional thinking. The BumpTop world is a physical space, where traditional point-and-click movement is replaced with a more literal “push and pull” approach, and the icons each possess a weight that reflects their relative importance. Meanwhile, commands are executed via a novel set of pen/stylus shortcuts that go well beyond the limited click-and-drag way of doing things.

Even if you’re not quite ready to trade your olde tyme desktop for the BumpTop experience, the interface’s unexpected approach to problem-solving is sure to bump-start your thinking in new and unusual directions.

Google TechTalks June 7, 2006 Jen Fitzpatrick is an Engineering Director at Google. She currently manages Google’s user experience team, which is responsible for the user interface design and usability analysis of Google’s many products.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=697KX4Ciiws

A founding member of Google’s UI team, Jen has also led the UI design, testing and implementation of numerous features and changes to the Google.com site. In the past, Jen has also served as Engineering Director for Google Adwords and Google’s Internal Systems engineering group. Jen joined Google in June 1999 as a software engineer. She is a graduate of Stanford University where she received a B.S. in Symbolic Systems and an M.S. in Computer Science. ABSTRACT Focus on the user and all else will follow. From its inception, Google has focused on providing the best user experience possible. Jen Fitzpatrick will take you through the art and science behind Google’s design process and share examples of how design, usability and engineering come together in Google’s unique culture to create great products.