This article shares with many other academic exercises a fine analytical examination of current trends but provides a woefully unhelpful basis for innovation. It sounds merely negative to say that, but I think the problem isn't with the scholarship of these exercises, but the purposes they're put to. Plainly put, academic constraints in all but the most fearless imposes a kind of self-censorship, a desire to present a tidy, well-researched argument that only with extreme caution ventures out on a limb.
Almost the first thing I do when reading articles like this is scroll to the end and see if any actual interface designs are offered. There are none. No criticism is intended; mostly a statement of the obvious!
The frustrating thing is that interface design FEELS like it ought to be the most natural thing in the world, yet even after the first Macintosh in 1984 we are STILL steaming down the track of the window paradigm. Over 25 years it's of course become more 'natural' - which is to simply say more mentally efficient - but thinking outside the paradigm is kind of like trying to imagine a third arm; or at least wiggle an eyebrow you've never wiggled ...
Almost the first thing I do when reading articles like this is scroll to the end and see if any actual interface designs are offered. There are none. No criticism is intended; mostly a statement of the obvious!
The frustrating thing is that interface design FEELS like it ought to be the most natural thing in the world, yet even after the first Macintosh in 1984 we are STILL steaming down the track of the window paradigm. Over 25 years it's of course become more 'natural' - which is to simply say more mentally efficient - but thinking outside the paradigm is kind of like trying to imagine a third arm; or at least wiggle an eyebrow you've never wiggled ...