Protos

Wired has this wonderful story:

People who are about to drop $300 on a bottle of Chateau Margeaux want the experience to be awesome — bouquet, color, mouthfeel, yada yada. But what about the ordering? Avid wine snobs might think about a trip to Adour, the restaurant opening at New York’s St. Regis Hotel in November. Pull up a stool at the goatskin-upholstered wine bote, tap the glowing word wines projected in front of you, and the list scrolls into view. Choose a type and a bottle — hand and finger movements reveal its details (grape, origin, tasting notes, cost). The info unfolds with an animated flourish out of a flower icon; think Minority Report meets Sideways. Behind the alcohol-enabling magic is a lot of technology: Cameras and object-recognition software track your hand gestures — and ignore stuff like glassware — following the motion with a trail of projected white pixel dust. And all that vino data stays safe on a dedicated Web server. Need help? Luckily, there’s a sommelier on duty, so don’t worry about getting transferred to a call center in Bangalore.

via: wired.com

Since I am writing an Industrial PhD for the The Danfoss Group. I was glad to see that Steve Job’s thinks of interfaces as pure language:

In contrast, Mr. Jobs said that multitouch drastically simplified the process of controlling a computer.

There are no “verbs” in the iPhone interface, he said, alluding to the way a standard mouse or stylus system works. In those systems, users select an object, like a photo, and then separately select an action, or “verb,” to do something to it.

via: NYTimes

Although Jobs is speaking on the status of low cognitive strain in direct touch interfaces (interaction design). He is choosing a pure linguistic metaphor. Since I am taking the general approach, that you are indeed designing the communication situation when you are designing Collaborative software I was happy to see him state that.

Well the only flip side might be that he also states that languages without verbs are possible. Hey, could the verb not be the actual touch…? touch = noun + verb?

Anyway, HCI designed as communication – not only interaction.

@nadshot.com they have a collection of groin punches from comic books…

For instance but not limited to:

More at nadshot.com

Click image for lager version in a new browser: