Image: Moovit Wall from Displex
For decades computer operating systems have used the traditional desktop metaphor. Programs and files are represented by icons and open in windows. For control we use the keyboard and mouse. Now we are seeing changes in this way of interacting with computers. Recently, at their WWDC conference, Apple showed new Macs with multitouch trackpads, offering a new way to interact with computers. Upcoming Windows 8 operating system from Microsoft will contain touch features, so the line between PC operating systems and mobile is blurring.
New Technology student Tomas Hahn wrote a paper titled: Future Human Computer Interaction with special focus on input and output techniques. The paper is a good summary of developments in interacting with computers.
The abstract from the paper is this:
Human Computer Interaction in the field of input and output techniques has developed a lot of new techniques over the last few years. With the recently released full multi- touch tablets and notebooks the way how people interact with the computer is coming to a new dimension. As humans are used to handle things with their hands the technology of multi-touch displays or touchpad’s brought much more convenience for use in daily life. But for sure the usage of human speech recognition will also play an important part in the future of human computer interaction. This paper introduces techniques and devices using the humans hand gestures for the use with multi-touch tablets and video recognition and techniques for voice interaction. Thereby the gesture and speech recognition take an important role as these are the main communication methods between humans and how they could disrupt the keyboard or mouse as we know it today.
Paper: Future Human Computer Interaction with special focus on input and output techniques