Zooming interfaces: an alternative to the Windows user experience
Jef Raskin, the human interface expert who started the Macintosh project at Apple in the late 70´s, was not happy about how most of us today work with their computers:
“In present systems, work gets done in applications (which are sets of commands that apply to certain kinds of objects). Tasks are not accomplished at the desktop, and desktops (or launching areas in general) should disappear as interfaces improve. The idea of an application is an artificial one, convenient to the programmer but not to the user. From a user’s point of view there is content (a set of objects created or obtained by the user) and there are commands that can operate on objects. Commands should be independent of applications and be applicable at any time and to any object.”
Source: http://jef.raskincenter.org/humane_interface/summary_of_thi.html
(This link is not (any more) reachable at the point of publishing this post)
Raskin looked into zooming user interfaces to overcome what he considered as one the root causes of today’s computer usability issues.
What are zooming user interfaces and in how far are they different from what we all are used to by Microsoft’s Windows or Apples OSX?
The following three applications will allow you to experience zooming interfaces yourself. Two of them will enable you to build presentations that do not work based on the concept of “slides” but instead allow you during your presentation to zoom in and out of the set of information that you are providing to your audience.
1) Prezi
http://prezi.com/ is a new web based application to create presentations. It is a great example of how zooming interfaces (can) work.
Creator of this video: prezi / http://www.youtube.com/user/zuilabs
Is Microsoft ignoring zooming interfaces because maybe it does not want to provide itself an alternative to the Windows user experience?
Wrong.
Find out below what zooming user interfaces you can get for Microsoft Office as free downloads from Micrsoft itself.
2) pptPlex
There is an Office 2007 extension from Microsofts Officelab called pptPlex that will allow you to give presentations with a zooming interface. It is freely available, has been just recently updated (06/05/200) and can be downloaded from here: http://www.officelabs.com/projects/pptPlex/Pages/default.aspx
Creator of this video: Microsoft OfficeLab http://www.youtube.com/user/OfficeLabs
3) Canvas for OneNote
Not yet convinced that Microsoft is actively looking beyond Windows to improve usability?
Recently Microsoft released also a prototype for Microsoft’s OneNote that allows to zoom in and out of OneNote information. The video below is demonstrating this nicely. Again Canvas for OneNote is a free download from Microsoft OfficeLabs (but it requires OneNote 2007 AND Vista): http://www.officelabs.com/projects/canvasforonenote/Pages/default.aspx
Creator of this video: Microsoft OfficeLab http://www.youtube.com/user/OfficeLabs
Closing comment:
We often dislike what we don’t know.
Maybe Prezi, pptPlex or Canvas for OnenNote can help to change that for zooming interfaces.
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Mai 11th, 2009 at 8:02 am and is filed under Good Ideas, Interesting Links. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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November 23rd, 2009 at 10:03 pm
[...] and Pivot are the code names of two new Microsoft applications that make use of a zooming interface to let users change from overview to detailed views in a seamless [...]