Over the years a range of GUI’s have been developed for different operating systems such as OS/2, Macintosh, Windowsamiga, Linux, Symbian OS, and more.

We’ll be taking a look at the evolution of the interface designs of the major operating systems since the 80’s.

I should mention that this article showcases only the significant advances in GUI design (not operating system advances) and also not all of the graphical user interfaces and operating systems existing today.

The first GUI was developed by researchers at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in the ’70s. This research opened a whole new era of computer graphic innovations.

The first personal computer which used a modern graphical user interface was the Xerox Alto, developed in 1973. This was not a commercial product and was intended mainly for research at universities.

Source: toastytech.com

1981-1985

Xerox 8010 Star (released in 1981)

This was the first system that was referred to as a fully integrated desktop computer including applications and a GUI. It was known as “The Xerox Star”, later renamed “ViewPoint” and later again renamed to “GlobalView”.

Xerox 8010 Star, Source: toastytech.com

Apple Lisa Office System 1 (released in 1983)

Also referred to as Lisa OS, which in this case is short for Office System. It was developed by Apple with the intention of being a document processing workstation.

Unfortunately this workstation didn’t last, it was killed by Apple’s Macintosh operating system that was more affordable.

There were upgrades to Lisa OS, Lisa OS 2 in 1983 and Lisa OS 7/7 3.1 in 1984, that upgraded the system itself, but not the graphical user interface.

Apple Lisa OS 1, Source: GUIdebook

Apple Lisa OS 1, Source: GUIdebook

VisiCorp Visi On (released in 1984)

Visi On was the first desktop GUI developed for the IBM PC. This system was targeted towards big corporations and came with a high price tag. The GUI made use of a mouse, it had a built-in installer and help system and it didn’t use icons.

VisiCoprt Visi On, Source: toastytech.com

VisiCoprt Visi On, Source: toastytech.com

Mac OS System 1.0 (released in 1984)

System 1.0 was the first operating system GUI developed for the Macintosh. It had several features of a modern operating system, being windows based with icons. The windows could be moved around with the mouse and files and folders could be copied by dragging and dropping onto the target location.

Apple Mac System 1.0, Source: toastytech.com

Amiga Workbench 1.0 (released in 1985)

When first released, Amiga was ahead of its time. The GUI included features such as color graphics (four colors: black, white, blue, orange), preemptive multitasking, stereo sound and multi-state icons (selected and unselected).

Amiga Workbench 1.0, Source: GUIdebook

Amiga Workbench 1.0, Source: GUIdebook

Windows 1.0x (released in 1985)

In this year Microsoft finally caught up with the whole graphical user interface craze and released Windows 1.0, its first GUI based operating system (although no one would dare to refer to it as one). The system featured 32×32 pixel icons and color graphics. The most interesting feature (which later was omitted) was the icon of the animated analog clock.

Microsoft Windows 1.01, Source: makowski-berlin.de

Microsoft Windows 1.01, Source: makowski-berlin.de

GEM (released in 1985)

GEM (Graphical Environment Manager) was a windowing style GUI created by Digital Research, Inc. (DRI). It was initially created for use with the CP/M operating system on the Intel 8088 and Motorola 68000 microprocessors and was later developed to run on DOS as well. Most people will remember GEM as the GUI for the Atari ST computers. It was also used on a series Amstrad’s IBM compatible computers. It was the core for Ventura Publisher and a few other DOS programs. The GUI was also ported to other computers but did not gain popularity on them.

Source: Wikipedia

1986 – 1990

IRIX 3 (released in 1986, first release 1984)

The 64-bit IRIX operating system was created for UNIX. An interesting feature of this GUI is the support for vector icons. This feature was built into the GUI long before Mac OS X even existed.

Silicon Graphics IRIX 3.0, Source: osnews.com

GEOS (released in 1986)

The GEOS (Graphic Environment Operating System) operating system was developed by Berkeley Softworks (later GeoWorks). It was originally designed for the Commodore 64 and included a graphical word processor, called geoWrite and a paint program called geoPaint.

Source: Wikipedia

Windows 2.0x (released in 1987)

In this version, the actual management of the windows had significantly improved. The windows could be overlapped, resized, maximized and minimized.

Microsoft Windows 2.03, Source: guidebookgallery.org

Microsoft Windows 2.03, Source: guidebookgallery.org

OS/2 1.x (released in 1988)

OS/2 was originally co-developed by IBM and Microsoft, but in 1991 the two companies split up, with Microsoft incorporating the technology in its own Windows GUI and IBM developing OS/2 further. The GUI used in OS/2 was called “Presentation Manager”. This version of the GUI only supported monochrome, fixed icons.

Microsoft-IBM OS/2 1.1, Source: pages.prodigy.net

Microsoft-IBM OS/2 1.1, Source: pages.prodigy.net

NeXTSTEP / OPENSTEP 1.0 (released in 1989)

Steve Jobs came up with the idea to create the perfect research computer for universities and research labs. This idea later evolved into a startup called NeXT Computer Inc.

The first NeXT computer was released in 1988, however significant advances were made in 1989 with the release of the NeXTSTEP 1.0 GUI, which later evolved into OPENSTEP.

The GUI’s icons were bigger (48×48) and it introduced more colors. The GUI was initially monochrome, but version 1.0 started supporting color monitors too. This screenshot gives you have a peek into what would become the modern GUIs.

NeXTSTEP 1.0, Source: kernelthread.com

OS/2 1.20 (released in 1989)

The next minor version upgrade of the GUI showed slight improvements in many areas. The icons looked nicer and the windows were smoother.

OS/2 1.2, Source pages.prodigy.net

Windows 3.0 (released in 1990)

By this version, Microsoft had realized the real potential in GUI’s and started to significantly improve them.

The operating system itself supported standard and 386 enhanced modes, which made use of higher memory capacity than 640 KB and hard disk space, resulting in the ability to use higher screen resolutions and better graphics, such as Super VGA 800×600 and 1024×768.

Also, Microsoft hired Susan Kare to design the Windows 3.0 icons and to add a unified style to the GUI.

Microsoft Windows 3.0, Source: toastytech.com

Microsoft Windows 3.0, Source: toastytech.com

1991 – 1995

Amiga Workbench 2.04 (released in 1991)

Many improvements were made to this version of the GUI. The color scheme changed and a 3D look was introduced. The desktop could be divided vertically into screens of different resolutions and color depths, which nowadays seems a little odd. The default resolution of Workbench was 640×256, but the hardware supported larger resolutions too.

Commodore Amiga Workbench 2.04, Source: guidebookgallery.org

Mac OS System 7 (released in 1991)

Mac OS version 7.0 was the first Mac OS GUI which supported colors. Subtle shades of grey, blue and yellow were added to icons.

Apple Mac OS System 7.0, Source: guidebookgallery.org

Apple Mac OS System 7.0, Source: guidebookgallery.org

Windows 3.1 (released in 1992)

This version of Windows included TrueType fonts which were pre-installed. This effectively made Windows a functional desktop publishing platform for the first time.

Previously, it was only possible to achieve such functionality in Windows 3.0 using the Adobe Type Manager (ATM) font system from Adobe. This version also contained a color scheme named Hotdog Stand, which contained bright hues of red, yellow and black.

This color scheme was designed to help people with some degree of color blindness see text/graphics on the screen easier.

Source: Wikipedia

OS/2 2.0 (released in 1992)

This was the first GUI that was subjected to international acceptance, usability and accessibility testing. The entire GUI was developed using object-oriented design. Every file and folder was an object which could be associated with other files, folders and applications. It also supported drag and drop functionality and templates.

IBM OS/2 2.0, Source: toastytech.com

IBM OS/2 2.0, Source: toastytech.com

Windows 95 (released in 1995)

The user interface was completely re-designed since version 3.x. This was the first Windows version where a small close button was added to each window.

The design team gave states (enabled, disabled, selected, checked, etc.) to icons and other graphics. The famous Start button appeared for the first time.

This was a huge step forward for Microsoft regarding the operating system itself and the unified GUI.

Microsoft Windows 95, Source: guidebookgallery.org

Microsoft Windows 95, Source: guidebookgallery.org

1996 – 2000

OS/2 Warp 4 (released in 1996)

IBM released OS/2 Warp 4 which brought a significant facelift to the workspace.

Icons were placed on the desktop, where custom files and folders could also be created. The shredder appeared which was similar to Windows’ Recycle Bin or Mac OS’s Trash, except it deleted the file or folder instantly and didn’t store any additional copies for later retrieval.

IBM OS/2 Warp 4, Source: toastytech.com

IBM OS/2 Warp 4, Source: toastytech.com

Mac OS System 8 (released in 1997)

256 color icons were the default in this version of the GUI. Mac OS 8 was one of the early adopters of isometric style icons, also called pseudo-3D icons. The platinum grey theme used here became a trademark for future versions of the GUI.

Apple Mac OS 8, Source: guidebookgallery.org

Windows 98 (released in 1998)

The icon styles were almost the same as in Windows 95, but the whole GUI could use more than 256 colors for rendering. Windows Explorer changed almost completely and the “Active Desktop” appeared for the first time.

Microsoft Windows 98, Source: toastytech.com

KDE 1.0 (released in 1998)

This is how the KDE team described the project upon releasing version 1.0: “KDE is a network transparent, contemporary desktop environment for UNIX workstations. KDE seeks to fill the need for an easy to use desktop for Unix workstations, similar to the desktop environments found under the MacOS or Window95/NT. A completely free and open computing platform available to anyone free of charge including its source code for anyone to modify.”

Source: Wikipedia

BeOs 4.5 (released in 1999)

The BeOS operating system was developed for personal computers. It was originally written by Be In in 1991 to run on BeBox hardware. It was later further developed to take advantage of newer technologies and hardware such as symmetric multiprocessing by utilizing modular I/O bandwidth, pervasive multithreading, preemptive multitasking and a custom 64-bit journaling file system known as BFS. The BeOS GUI was developed on the principles of clarity and a clean, uncluttered design.

Source: Wikipedia

GNOME 1.0 (released in 1999)

GNOME desktop was mainly developed for Red Hat Linux, later it was developed for other Linux distributors as well.

Red Hat Linux GNOME 1.0.39, Source: visionfutur.com

2001 – 2005

Mac OS X (released in 2001)

In early 2000 Apple announced their new Aqua interface and in 2001 the company released it with their brand new operating system called Mac OS X.

The default 32 x 32 and 48 x 48 icons were changed to big 128 x 128 anti-aliased and semi-transparent icons.

Lots of criticism followed after the release of this GUI. Apparently users were not quite ready for such a big change, but soon enough they adopted the new style and today this GUI represents the basis of all Mac OS X operating systems.

Apple Mac OS X 10.1 Source: guidebookgallery.org

Windows XP (released in 2001)

As Microsoft tends to change their GUI completely with every major operating system release, Windows XP was no exception. The GUI itself is skinnable, users could change the whole look and feel of the interface. The icons were 48 x 48 in size by default, rendered in millions of colors.

Microsoft Windows XP Professional, Source: guidebookgallery.org

KDE 3 (released in 2002)

Since version 1.0, the K Desktop Environment improved significantly. They polished all the graphics and icons and unified the whole user experience.

KDE 3.0.1, Source: netbsd.org

2007 – 2009 (current)

Windows Vista (released in 2007)

This was Microsoft’s response to their competition. They also included quite a lot of 3D and animation. Since Windows 98, Microsoft has always tried to improve the desktop. With Windows Vista they released widgets and a somewhat improved replacement of the Active Desktop.

Microsoft Windows Vista, Source: technology.berkeley.edu

Mac OS X Leopard (released in 2007)

With their 6th generation, Mac OS X system Apple, once again improved the user interface. The basic GUI is still the Aqua with its candy scroll bars and platinum grey, blue colors. The new GUI features a more 3D look, with the 3D dock and lots more animation and interactivity.

Apple Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Source: skattertech.com

GNOME 2.24 (2008)

GNOME put a lot of effort into creating the themes and artwork into v2.2.4 as their aim is “to make your computer look good”. They ran a competition to collect some of the most intruiging desktop backgrounds that their contributors have produced for use in v2.24.

Source: gnome.org

KDE (v4.0 Jan. 2008, v4.2 Mar. 2009)

Version 4 of K Desktop Environment produced many new improvements to the GUI such as animated, smooth, efficient window management and support for desktop widgets. The icons size are easily adjustable and almost every design element is much easier to configure. Some of the most noticeable changes include new icons, themes and sounds, which are provided by the Oxygen Project. These icons are more photorealistic. It is definitely a big improvement to the earlier versions of KDE. It can now also be run on Windows and Mac OS X platforms.

Source: Wikipedia

Though handset makers buy their touchscreens as components from the same select pool of suppliers, a good touchscreen experience requires more than just hardware. It requires a bit of design alchemy blending software, engineering and calibration for the perfect feel. Few smartphone makers have managed to get that balance right, say experts.

“If you think that no other touchscreen out there is as good as the iPhone, its not all in your head,” says Chris Verplaetse, vice president of the Moto Development Group, a product design and development firm. “It’s like asking what makes a Mercedes door close like a Mercedes door and a Hyundai door close like one though they use the same steel. There’s clearly a difference.”

Variables include engineering details such the calibration of the touch sensor so it can separate the signal from the noise, the quality of the firmware and the level of integration of the touch experience into the phone’s user interface. There are also more difficult-to-quantify things such as as the level of the company’s commitment to making the best touchscreen experience possible.

“Many layers account for the performance of a touchscreen,” says Verplaetse. “But it all comes down to how well the electronics and the mechanical hardware are integrated.”

As cellphones became more powerful, allowing users to surf the internet and check e-mail, handset makers started to add touch capability to their phones. The earliest screens were resistive touchscreens, where two thin metallic layers are separated by a narrow gap. A finger pushing down on the top layer makes contact with the bottom surface and the point of contact is computed by the accompanying electronics.

But resistive touchscreens didn’t make most consumers happy because they weren’t responsive enough — you had to really push and hammer away at the display with your fingernail or a stylus to get it to respond.

The capacitive touchscreen in Apple’s iPhone changed the game, because it’s not pressure-sensitive. Instead, this kind of technology responds to the electrical properties of your skin, not the pressure of your finger, to figure out where you’re touching the screen. For the first time, just a light tap could open an application or a flicking gesture could get the screen scrolling. Best of all, it seemed effortless.

A projected capacitive touchscreen — the kind that’s usually used in phones — has a glass insulator coated with a transparent conductive layer. The layer is etched into a gridlike pattern. When a finger touches the surface of the screen, it distorts the electrostatic field. That can be measured as a change in capacitance. The location of the touch is computed and it is passed on to a software application that relates the touch into actions for the device.

In theory, all capacitive touchscreens should offer consumers the same experience, but they rarely do, says Andrew Hsu, a technology strategist for Synaptics, one of the biggest touchscreen component makers.

“Capacitive touch-based handsets involve a lot of development work and quite a bit of engineering expertise in order to give them their ‘magical’ quality,” says Hsu.

It’s Not Just About Hardware

Smartphone users have no way to measure exactly how well the capacitive sensor system on their phone is actually working. Their perception is based on the feedback they see on the screen, says Hsu. That means a touchscreen could be quite fast and accurate, but if the visual display doesn’t keep up, it won’t feel smooth or responsive.

That’s where well-designed user interfaces and quality firmware come into play.

“Some systems are better at it than others,” says Hsu.

Synaptics ran tests comparing the iPhone touchscreen to the original BlackBerry Storm. They found that the Storm’s touchscreen sensor responded well, which pointed the finger at the underlying firmware.

It’s also a reason why BlackBerry maker Research In Motion was able to fix some of the lag and the bugginess of the screen that reviewers had initially complained about. Subsequent updates to the Storm’s software significantly improved its responsiveness to touch.

Another problem is separating signal from noise, which some phones are better at than others.

A perfectly designed and well-tuned capacitive sensing system would require no pressure to detect the presence of a user’s finger. But to get there, handset makers have to solve what Hsu calls the “needle in a haystack problem.”

The amount of signal that your finger contributes when it touches the sensor is very small compared to the noise already present in the system. To accurately sense it and compute its location requires some software magic.

“Even if you design the entire touchscreen right, once you put it into the device, there’s an impact from other sources that emit electromagnetic interference, such as the wireless unit,” says Hsu.

That’s where an ASIC, or application specific integrated circuit, is needed to measure and amplify the signals. Apple reportedly designed its own ASIC for the iPhone’s touchscreen, while most other companies buy an ASIC from one of the touchscreen chipmakers.

Finding the Right Balance

In January, Moto Labs, Moto Development Group’s research group, tested different touchscreens by using a drawing program to draw a few straight lines on the display. On a good touchscreen, users can draw clean, straight lines, say the researchers, while inferior touchscreens show lines that look jagged (see the photo above). The jagged lines happen because the sensor size may be too big, the touch-sampling rate may be too low, or the algorithms that convert gestures into images don’t faithfully represent user inputs.

Moto Labs’ tests showed the iPhone had the most precise lines, though there was loss of sensitivity around the edges. The HTC Droid and Nexus One also did well, while the Motorola Droid’s touchscreen came out at the bottom.

Though Palm Pre wasn’t included in that test, Moto says the Pre’s screen responded well. Meanwhile, a Palm Pre Plus user recently complained about the device’s poor touchscreen.

Palm wouldn’t comment about that particular complaint, but the company says the Pre and Pre Plus have been designed to optimize the touch experience. For instance, the Pre and the Pre Plus have a “soft arc” on the top surface to allow for gestures without interference from the edges. And Palm tries to tweak the touchscreen through firmware updates.

“We made touch a central part of the navigation on the device,” says Leslie Letts, a spokesperson for Palm.

Getting the perfect touchscreen experience is also a matter of finding the right balance for the display.

One reason why Apple’s touch sensor is so sensitive to light touch is that the company uses a 12-volt power source for the sensing lines in the touchscreen sensor, versus the 3- to 5-volt power source that most other component manufacturers have. That higher voltage drive takes a toll on the battery life because it uses up more power, but it also translates into more accurate sensing, which means a better touch experience, say researchers at Moto.

Other cellphone manufacturers are making the investments to catch up but it will be a while before all touchscreens work as well as Apple’s, says J. Daniel Hebert, CEO of Moto Development Group.

“There’s a big difference between deferring to a vendor and driving the performance of the system,” he says.

One final factor: Steve Jobs. His imperious management style may be off-putting, but he does exercise complete control over the final versions of his company’s products, and that hands-on approach at the company’s highest levels helps ensure that the whole experience works well — including the feel of the touchscreen.

“For a good touchscreen, you need someone who is a generalist who can ask more than whether the software is complete and whether the hardware is complete,” says Verplaetse. “Steve Jobs is an example of someone who probably asks, “Does this feel right?” when he’s looking at a new product.”

The haters say iPad lacks multitasking, a webcam, Flash support, a USB port, massive storage, a removable battery, CD and DVD support, RAM upgradability, multiple OS support and other features.

The lovers are less clear about why they want one. So allow me to propose the same list as above. It works just as well. The iPad is desirable for what it doesn’t do — can’t do — as much as for what it can do.

A strange trend has emerged that violates the more-is-better ethos of American consumer culture. Some products and services are touting limitations as desirable “features.” And consumers are loving it.

This strikes some as Orwellian doublespeak: “War is peace.” “Freedom is slavery.” “Less is more.”

But the truth is that people don’t buy consumer electronics for the quantity of features. They buy it for the quality of experience.

For technical users, having more features means a better experience. So-called power users are harassed and annoyed by limitations, by the inability to do something they want to do. They feel a thrill when they’re empowered to do some useful new thing.

But for most users, having more features degrades experience. People suffer information overload and its ugly cousin, runaway gadget complexity. They’re harassed and annoyed, not by limitations, but by features they can’t find or figure out, and by problems they don’t understand. They feel a thrill when gadgets perform basic tasks without fail or hassle.

The vast majority of ordinary PC users I’ve talked to have problems on their PCs, laptops and netbooks that bother them greatly but they cannot fix. The sound card isn’t working right. I can’t make this dialog box go away. Why can’t I print?

Gadget overcomplexity doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s joined by the growing overcomplexity of life in general. People spend enormous amounts of time and energy these days navigating automated help services and dealing with one complicated mess after another. The relationship between people and their banks, insurance companies, health care providers and government has become hostile, maddening and exhausting.

The last thing people need is PC-related problems they don’t understand when, say, paying taxes online.

Technical people always complain about being buttonholed at every family get-together by relatives who want “free tech support.” But why do they want this? Why do they need it? The answer is that consumer technology is overly complex.

And whose fault is it?

Unfortunately, it’s my fault. And possibly your fault. It’s the fault of everyone, including marketers, who relentlessly call for more, more and ever more features. Combine this with our calls for backward compatibility, and the result is systems that do everything. They’re so feature-rich, so complex, that some people can’t get them to do anything.

I’ve noticed a trend online recently of new services whose main feature is that they hardly do anything.

Twitter was the first major site in this new trend, which boldly asserted its limitations as features. “You can’t send more than 140 characters!” “No pictures!” “No formatting!” “It does hardly anything!” Welcome to the future.

Hard to believe now, but remember when MySpace was the dominant social network? MySpace gave us so many features that people could, did and do plaster their profiles with incredible (usually incredibly ugly) customization. It was early with apps and add-ons. Not Facebook. It turns out that social networking fans wanted a closed system, locked down and feature-limited.

I’ve noticed this trend in the reminders and to-do-list world. Once, most people used an organizer application, like Microsoft Outlook, to manage their to-do lists. Then a new wave of more limited task managers rolled onshore with the Web 2.0 tsunami. Remember the Milk was typical of the first wave. Then came more desirable and less feature-rich services like Todoist. The trend toward less continued with TeuxDeux, which is incredibly “feature-poor.” And if that’s too capable, you can always embrace Now Do This, which is essentially a blank page with one to-do item on it, and a link to add what comes next in the series.

We’ve seen this same devolution in the areas of online backup, blog design, calendaring and a whole range of social and communications online services. And, really, you can’t reduce the number of features of a communications service much more than this.

The less-is-more world is here. Get used to it.

And if you’re going to argue with an iPad fan about why netbooks are better, don’t bother with listing what the iPad cannot do. Limitations are what people want now.

But if these tablets do come on the market, will they catch on? And will you be getting one anytime soon? Well, to try to answer that question, let’s take a look at tablet computing history.

Tablet Evolution, not Revolution

First, let’s just lay this on the table – tablet computers are not new. A few years ago tablet computers burst onto the scene with a lot of promise, only to be relegated to niche markets and specific uses.

While it showed to be quite interesting, it is my opinion that the implementation was not right. The Windows based pen computer was virtually a windows computer with a few goodies thrown in for the pen. Sure, journal and the sticky notes were definitely interesting, and it allowed a lot of freedom when using the pen. But merely replacing the mouse with a pen and adding a few specialized functions is probably a good entry into the “How not to introduce a new computing paradigm” playbook.

The pen took longer to enter data than a keyboard did, and the interface was designed for a mouse. The tablet computer suffered, despite a few holdouts that actually liked a pen computer (I still love my TC1100).

Where tablets are now

As mentioned, the CES 2010 brought out a lot of tablets that will soon see the light of day. And the majority of them are running Windows 7. Aha, isn’t that an OS designed for a mouse? Did we not just go through that with the last round of pen tablets?

Sad to say, we did. Windows with a touch screen is, in this writer’s opinion, not a finger friendly OS. Sure, it does finer touches now – multiple simultaneous touches, even. But even a quick look at a screen shows you that they are using the same screen mechanics as a mouse does for the most part.

The interface is not designed for a pen, much less a finger. Yet the bulk of the new tablet market is going to be running this OS, apparently. So, why would the average person want to forgo the mouse and use their finger instead?

The answer is this – they have no reason to do so. If the tablet computing paradigm continues to be introduced with a mouse designed interface, then we can stick a fork in it. Outside of a few niche areas (and I am in one of those, to be sure), you can call tablet computing done.

Tablet Computers, From the Ground Up

So, if sticking Windows 7 on a tablet with touchpad support is not going to make it work, then what is? Well, the answer to that might just be in recent history. Recent Mobile history, to be exact.

Windows Mobile has seen a good run, and from its early inception to the latest version (sans Windows Mobile 7, if that ever does see the light of day), it has sold in the millions. They precede a lot of the current competition in mobile OS, and they carry with it the branding of the world’s most popular desktop operating system. They should have the market.

But they don’t, and a few relatively new competitors are ripping through the market, leaving Windows Mobile behind in their dust, at least for now. What did they do wrong?

Simple – they implemented an interface that was too much like the desktop. The mouse-evolved screen elements took up a lot of precious screen real estate. As a long time user of Windows Mobile (also known by the more correct name, Pocket PC), I can attest that you needed a good stylus and a steady hand to make use of the interface. It may have been labeled mobile, but you had to stop to see what you were doing.

A New Interface

But recently a competitor released a phone that had an interface designed from the ground up to be finger centric. The iPhone, by Apple, showed us exactly how you could scroll a list using a touch screen without a single tiny scroll bar on the side. Suddenly a finger would actually work, and screen elements such as drop down lists were accommodating to the user, not the other way around. The result was a great success.

On its heels, computing giant Google has released its Android operating system, again designed to be finger friendly from the ground up. The Android name is finding its way onto many different handsets, and the end result is that a touch screen device is becoming accepted as the normal smartphone of choice, no stylus required.

Interface Impact

So, how does this affect tablet computers? Well, if the rumor mill proves to be true, then there are new tablets coming on the market that run these operating systems. This is perhaps the biggest difference from the earlier attempt at making tablets a mainstream device.

A tablet device running an interface that is finger-centric by design, not mouse-centric with allowances, is in my opinion enough to turn the tide and opens the door for these sleek machines.

It really does come down to this – it must be conveniently easy to use. Otherwise the new crop of tablets are again headed for the niche markets and power users only. You have to give the users a reason to use a tablet, not let them make do with a tablet.

Is a tablet in your future?

With that said, I am curious as to how the average computer user feels about the new crop of tablets. Would you want a Windows 7 device so that you can run existing software? Or would you want a new design that allows a new software design to interface to your lifestyle?

This type of interface is a classic tool in gee-whiz science fiction. But the hard science behind it is even more wow-inducing.

Researchers are already using brain-computer interfaces to aid the disabled, treat diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, and provide therapy for depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Work is under way on devices that may eventually let you communicate with friends telepathically, give you superhuman hearing and vision or even let you download data directly into your brain, a la “The Matrix.”

Researchers are practically giddy over the prospects. “We don’t know what the limits are yet,” says Melody Moore Jackson, director of Georgia Tech University’s BrainLab.

Adds Emory University neuroscience professor Michael Crutcher, “Anything can happen.”

At the root of all this technology is the 3-pound generator we all carry in our head. It produces electricity at the microvolt level. But the signals are strong enough to move robots, wheelchairs and prosthetic limbs — with the help of an external processor.

Harnessing that power “opens up a whole new paradigm for us as human beings,” says neuroscientist Rajesh Rao of the University of Washington.

Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) come in two varieties. Noninvasive techniques use electrodes placed on the scalp to measure electrical activity. Invasive procedures implant electrodes directly into the brain. In both cases, the devices interact with a computer to produce a wide variety of applications, ranging from medical breakthroughs and military-tech advances to futuristic video games and toys.

Much of the research focuses on neuroprosthetics, which offer a way for the brain to compensate for injuries and illness. Jackson helped develop an intelligent wheelchair called the Aware Chair, which can be guided by neural activity.

She is also working on communication programs for people who have been paralyzed by strokes or spinal-cord injuries. Implanted electrodes allow “locked in” patients to spell out messages by manipulating a computer cursor with their thoughts alone.

Rao is tapping into that same concept to help paralyzed people manipulate robots to fetch items or move things around the house. With cameras to provide visual feedback, the patients and robots don’t even need to be in the same room, or the same city. Rao says the technology “frees the mind from the constraints of the body.”

Cochlear implants are the most common neuroprosthetic. They help the brain interpret sounds and are sometimes called “bionic ears” for the deaf. Other researchers are looking for similar ways to help blind people see. Neurobiologist Ed Boyden of MIT says miniature optical devices can be implanted to convert photoreceptors into workable cameras for the brain.

None of this comes cheap. Most research is funded by deep pockets such as the National Institutes of Health, the defense department and NASA.

But every breakthrough brings the most advanced BCI technologies closer to the mass market. Jackson says she foresees a day when people with disabilities can spend a few hundred dollars instead of $20,000 on a workable system.

Mainstreaming the technology raises some troubling issues for Crutcher, who teaches a course at Emory in neuro-ethics. He fears that expensive eye and ear implants could produce a computer-enhanced elite.

“If only the rich can afford it, it puts everyone else at a disadvantage,” says Crutcher, who believes many aspects of BCI are ripe for abuse. Just the idea of mucking about with a person’s brain “raises questions about safety and efficacy,” he says.

One of the more controversial uses under development is telepathy. It would require at least two people to be implanted with electrodes that send and receive signals back and forth.

DARPA, the Pentagon’s technology research division, is currently working on an initiative called “Silent Talk,” which would let soldiers on secret missions communicate with their thoughts alone. This stealth component is attractive, but naysayers fear that such soldiers could become manipulated for evil means.

Telepathy implants won’t replace Facebook and Twitter anytime soon, but that possibility is problematic as well.

“You can imagine communicating with your friends through the devices, and that opens up a lot of ethical issues,” Rao says. Would you want your friends and family to know everything you are thinking? Would little white lies become obsolete?

These questions of morality and liability are not a huge factor for the toy makers and video game developers who are already bringing the most basic BCI technology to consumers.

Games like Mindflex and the Star Wars Force Trainer use headsets with simple electrodes to monitor levels of concentration and relaxation. The signals trigger a fan that can move a ball up or down, depending on how hard you’re thinking. Jackson calls it a “fascinating application of a very sophisticated technology in a very cheap package.”

The headsets used in both games were designed by the California company Neurosky. Its corporate partners are working on games that help Alzheimer’s patients improve memory techniques, teach concentration skills to kids with ADHD and let stressed- out CEOs work on relaxing.

Software entrepreneurs and executives are streaming into Boyden’s neuro-ventures class at MIT, looking for ways to capitalize on the array of potential uses for brain-computer interfaces.

Some ventures are already up and running. NeuroVigil in California is working on iBrain, designed, in part, to help provide instant feedback to drivers who start falling asleep at the wheel. Eos Neuroscience is developing light-sensitive protein-based sensors that can treat blindness.

Numerous companies are developing video games based on direct brain-computer interfacing. Neurosky sells a wireless headset that connects to any computer for a series of brain-training games. NeuroBoy lets you set targets on fire just by concentrating on them. Relax, and your character levitates. Another application lets you see a colorful visualization of your brain-wave activity.

Boyden expects to see many more such products hitting shelves sooner rather than later. He says the possibilities are endless if just a “fraction of the business leaders” taking his class start “bringing the technology into the world.”

Users can touch the screen to activate controls on the display but as soon as they lift their finger off the screen, the system can interpret their gestures in the third dimension, too. In effect, it turns the whole display into a giant sensor capable of telling where your hands are and how far away from the screen they are.

“The goal with this is to be able to incorporate the gestural display into a thin LCD device like a cell phone and to be able to do it without wearing gloves or anything like that,” says Matthew Hirsch, a doctoral candidate at the Media Lab who helped develop the system. MIT, which will present the idea at the Siggraph conference on Dec. 19.

The latest gestural interface system is interesting because it has the potential to be produced commercially, says Daniel Wigdor, a user experience architect for Microsoft.

“Research systems in the past put thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment around the room to detect gestures and show it to users,” he says. “What’s exciting about MIT’s latest system is that it is starting to move towards a form factor where you can actually imagine a deployment.”

Gesture recognition is the area of user interface research that tries to translate movement of the hand into on-screen commands. The idea is to simplify the way we interact with computers and make the process more natural. That means you could wave your hand to scroll pages, or just point a finger at the screen to drag windows around.

MIT has become a hotbed for researchers working in the area of gestural computing. Last year, an MIT researcher showed a wearable gesture interface called the ‘SixthSense’ that recognizes basic hand movements.

But most existing systems involve expensive cameras or require you to wear different-colored tracking tags on your fingers. Some systems use small cameras that can be embedded into the display to capture gestural information. But even with embedded cameras, the drawback is that the cameras are offset from the center of the screen and won’t work well at short distances. They also can’t switch effortlessly between gestural commands (waving your hands in the air) and touchscreen commands (actually touching the screen).

The latest MIT system uses an array of optical sensors that are arranged right behind a grid of liquid crystals, similar to those used in LCD displays. The sensors can capture the image of a finger when it is pressed against the screen. But as the finger moves away the image gets blurred.

By displacing the layer of optical sensors slightly relative to the liquid crystals array, the researchers can modulate the light reaching the sensors and use it capture depth information, among other things.

In this case, the liquid crystals serve as a lens and help generate a black-and-white pattern that lets light through to the sensors. That pattern alternates rapidly with whatever the image that the LCD is displaying, so the viewer doesn’t notice the pattern.

The pattern also allows the system to decode the images better, capturing the same depth information that a pinhole array would, but doing it much more quickly, say the MIT researchers.

The idea is so novel that MIT researchers haven’t been able to get LCDs with built-in optical sensors to test, though they say companies such as Sharp and Planar have plans to produce them soon.

For now, Hirsch and his colleagues at MIT have mocked up a display in the lab to run their experiments. The mockup uses a camera that is placed some distance from the screen to record the images that pass through the blocks of black-and-white squares.

The bi-directional screens from MIT can be manufactured in a thin, portable package that requires few additional components compared with LCD screens already in production, says MIT. (See video below for an explanation of how it works.)

Despite the ease of production, it will be five to ten years before such a system could make it into the hands of consumers, cautions Microsoft’s Wigdor. Even with the hardware in hand, it’ll take at least that long before companies like Microsoft make software that can make use of gestures.

“The software experience for gestural interface systems is unexplored in the commercial space,” says Wigdor.

Retrieving information from the Web when you’re on the go can be a challenge. To make it easier, graduate student Pranav Mistry has developed SixthSense, a device that is worn like a pendant and super­imposes digital information on the physical world. Unlike previous “augmented reality” systems, Mistry’s consists of in­expensive, off-the-shelf hardware. Two cables connect an LED projector and webcam to a Web-enabled mobile phone, but the system can easily be made wireless, says Mistry.

Users control SixthSense with simple hand gestures; putting your fingers and thumbs together to create a picture frame tells the camera to snap a photo, while drawing an @ symbol in the air allows you to check your e-mail. It is also designed to automatically recognize objects and retrieve relevant information: hold up a book, for instance, and the device projects reader ratings from sites like Amazon.com onto its cover. With text-to-speech software and a Bluetooth headset, it can “whisper” the information to you instead.

Remarkably, Mistry developed SixthSense in less than five months, and it costs under $350 to build (not including the phone). Users must currently wear colored “marker­s” on their fingers so that the system can track their hand gestures, but he is designing algorithms that will enable the phone to recognize them directly.

Each day more and more people are opening up their email inbox to find an invite to Google Wave (Google Wave). With that shiny new invite comes the inevitable quest for ideas about to how to put the medium to good use.

Should you happen to be one of those people, we’ve got a number of different resources that you can use to get up to speed with Google Wave. This time around, however, we wanted to look at how people are actually using it now. From process modelling and customer service, to project collaboration, annotation, and gaming, the examples listed here highlight the power of the newborn medium, and in part, showcase what we can expect as the platform matures.

1. SAP Gravity: Modeling within Google Wave

Understanding the power of real-time collaboration and its relevance to clients, SAP Research in Australia (Australia) has developed a business process modeling tool called Gravity that works within Google Wave.

The sophisticated tool, which can be embedded within a Wave as a gadget, allows for team members to remotely build complex models in unison, or after catching up via playback, without having to leave Google Wave.

Gravity and Google Wave work together harmoniously to create a modeling environment that appears to be just as robust as, if not more flexible than, expensive desktop software built for the same purpose.

We think SAP is certainly on to something here, and we encourage you to watch the video demonstration of Gravity in Google Wave in action.

2. Salesforce: Google Wave for Customer Service

Salesforce, like SAP, has figured out that they can use the Google Wave platform to support client needs and tackle real-life problems. As such, Salesforce has created a Google Wave extension that clients can use to help automate, and even personalize, the customer service experience.

Watch the demonstration video to see how the Salesforce extension gives customers the ability to use Google Wave to interact with an automated support robot. Of course, customers can request assistance from a human within the Wave as well.

What makes this example stand out is the fact that not only is the Google Wave dialogue being stored as a case record within Salesforce, but, because the robot is connected to the Salesforce Service Cloud, the robot can access previously stored customer data for tailored service. Ultimately, Salesforce has found a way to potentially save clients money on customer service efforts, all the while maintaining active records, with the assistance of Google Wave.

3. Mingle: Integrated Project Collaboration

Mingle is a project management and team collaboration tool developed by ThoughtWorks Studios, who realized that they could add Mingle’s project management metadata to conversations in Google Wave.

The integration is still a work in progress, but a demonstration of the concept was highlighted at Enterprise 2.0, and the basic idea is to give Google Wave users/Mingle clients the ability to bring their Mingle task data, which takes the form of cards, into Google Wave. Existing Mingle cards can be embedded into Wave conversation threads, and new Mingle cards/tasks can be created within Google Wave.

This particular use case highlights how Google Wave can work with existing project management systems for more streamlined and cohesive communication, creating parity regardless of where the user is accessing project data.

4. Ecomm Conference: Annotating a Live Event

Just last week our CEO, Pete Cashmore, wrote about how the savvy people behind the Ecomm conference doled out Wave accounts to attendees so that they could collaborate, in real-time, to annotate presentation content. The result was arguably a much better way to consume conference content than attempting to follow hashtag tweets on Twitter (Twitter).

You can read the full account, which was documented by Charlie Osmond, on the FreshNetworks blog, but here’s an excerpt that we think drives home the utility of the use case.

“Here’s what happened: an audience member would create a Google Wave and others in the audience would edit the wave during the presentation. The result would be a crowd-sourced write-up of the presentation: a transcript of key points and a record of audience comments.”

We happen to think this particular use case is genius, especially for content-rich seminars and events where attendees are typically taking their own individual notes. With the shared Google Wave experience they can combine forces to create a more meaningful and accurate recounting of information shared in conference sessions.

5. Gamers: Google Wave RPGs

A very detailed Ars Technica post highlights that there’s a growing collection of Google Wave users who are using the medium to play wave-borne RPGs (role playing games). As mentioned in the post, there’s a even a Wave dedicated to serving as an index for all the Wave RPGs currently in existence, and the last time we counted it included upwards of 300 contributing members, and a combination of 30 different ideas or full-fledged games.

According to Jon Stokes, the author of the post, Google Wave is adequate for some RPGs, but it could certainly be improved to allow for a more enjoyable experience. In the excerpt below, Stokes describes the current RPG (RPG) experience within Google Wave:

“The few games I’m following typically have at least three waves: one for recruiting and general discussion, another for out-of-character interactions (”table talk”), and the main wave where the actual in-character gaming takes place. Individual players are also encouraged to start waves between themselves for any conversations that the GM shouldn’t be privy to. Character sheets can be posted in a private wave between a player and the GM, and character biographies can go anywhere where the other players can get access to them.

The waves are persistent, accessible to anyone who’s added to them, and include the ability to track changes, so they ultimately work quite well as a medium for the non-tactical parts of an RPG. A newcomer can jump right in and get up-to-speed on past interactions, and a GM or industrious player can constantly maintain the official record of play by going back and fixing errors, formatting text, adding and deleting material, and reorganizing posts. Character generation seems to work quite well in Wave, since players can develop the shared character sheet at their own pace with periodic feedback from the GM.”