The transition from hand-scribed manuscripts to printed books was marked by a quarter-century interaction design lag. This stretch of the 15th century is known for the production of incunabula – printed books lacking the interface design advancements that have since become standard navigational features of book user experience such as page numbering, the table of contents, punctuation, and footnotes.

This lag my be attributed to market expectations – early book consumers wanted books that navigated like the manuscripts that preceded these moveable type facsimiles. Just as early book buyers expected books to work like manuscripts, modern ebook consumers expect ebooks to work like printed books. This has resulted in a wave of electronic incunabula – new platforms lacking interaction design innovations that exploit platform-specific opportunities.

There are a few famous papers by scientists, like the 1945 Atlantic article ‘As We May Think’ by Vannevar Bush. In this article, Bush imagines a complex microfilm device, a “memex’ – a desk topped with “slanting translucent screens” and a keyboard. Within one’s memex desk, an individual
“stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility… Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them… There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record.”

There’s also this remarkable video from 1967 meant to show life in 1999:

Far out. Although it seems they saw technology progressing more quickly than gender equity…

Going further back, there’s a Ladies Home Journal piece entitled ‘What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years’ published in December 1900. In addition to a few dreary predictions like “There will be no wild animals except in menageries,” there are fascinatingly accurate predictions such as “Ready-cooked meals will be bought from establishments similar to our bakeries of today.”

Then there’s this one, which gives me geek-chills:

Man will see around the world. Persons and things of all kinds will be brought within focus of cameras connected electrically with screens at opposite ends of circuits, thousands of miles at a span… The instrument bringing these distant scenes to the very doors of people will be connected with a giant telephone apparatus transmitting each incidental sound in its appropriate place.

I love living in the future, finding delight in blazing new trails to distant scenes in a polyester shirt…

Corey

But aside from these recently popular cyborgian devices, what other compelling emergent hardware might we be designing for? As I’ve blogged here in the past, I personally can’t wait to design for a wider application of epaper.

The folks at Lunar Design are conceiving interactive clothing constructed from an epaper-like material. Soon, interface designers and fashion designers will be sharing studio space…

The fashion universe has been putting holographic technology to use as well. This holographic Kate Moss is breathtaking (although I keep expecting her to lean over and say “Help me Obi Wan Kenobe, you’re my only hope!”) and the implications for the fine arts and cinema are readily apparent.

What might be some more utilitarian applications? Certainly, the educational world could benefit from this – imagine your e-textbooks coming with accurate holographic maps of the moon. Nice.

Then there’s MIT’s ‘Siftables‘ – little blocks that have a video display and audio capabilities. The creators of siftables describe them thusly:

Siftables are cookie-sized computers with motion sensing, neighbor detection, graphical display, and wireless communication. They act in concert to form a single interface: users physically manipulate them – piling, grouping, sorting – to interact with digital information and media. Siftables provides a new platform on which to implement tangible, visual and mobile applications.

Something about this is intriguing, but I don’t know what, exactly. It is cool and obviously could make a great toy or game, but I sense there’s a wider application I’m just not getting. Watch this video and reply if you have any ideas…

One thing I am certain of – I’m looking forward to designing an interface for a siftable-generated holographic teaching tool while wearing my interactive jacket.

- Corey

eTextbook iBooks on the iPad?

I see some real potential for textbooks and students. It’s hard to tell at this point, but it looks like the actual iBook app on the just-announced iPad is not particularly geared toward research-type reading – annotation, notes, integrated multimedia – but then again, maybe it is. Either way, a well-made eTextbook app could take care of that. A big question I have is the whole ‘eye-strain’ issue that e-paper solves. Will the illuminated screen of the iPad prohibit long-session reading? If not, is e-paper and e-ink dead? So soon?

With excellent design, useful functionality, and world-class content, Quizr is just one in a line of educational apps Exprima is developing to help make learning more ubiquitous, accessible, and fun.