Information Overload: Are You Up for the Interface Challenge?

Many of us are still clamoring on the Web 2.0 bandwagon while other interaction designers are plowing ahead to tackle new ways to share and interact with data. Sure, wikis and folksonomies are awesome, but information challenges are piling up, and a designer’s work is never done. In fact, that’s what makes our line of work so darn interesting—not to mention valuable to companies.

A while back after attending the Future of Web Design conference, I blogged about what Web 3.0 might look like. While my speculations were high level, a recent article entitled User Interfaces Rapidly Adjusting to Information Overload in Read Write Web showcases information challenges that are starting to rear their ugly yet beautiful heads.

Each scenario in the post includes a description of the interface, a hint at new information challenges, and a clip from YouTube to show off the technology. Below are examples of the types of interfaces and new design challenges that are ahead.

Giant touch screens

Touch screens assume, well, touch. So how do users interact when items are out of reach?

Desktops that mimic the ordered chaos of a physical desktop

If we’re mimicking physical space, a pile of documents should get displaced or should react as another document collides with it. How do we allow users to create both tidy and untidy piles?

Thought-controlled menus

A thought-controlled interface might be hard to imagine, though we already have thought-controlled artificial limbs that react solely to nerves controlled by your brain, so why not an interface?

3-D gaming

The article shows the impact moving from 2-D to 3-D can have on even the simplest gaming interfaces.

Very cool stuff. Check out the full article: User Interfaces Rapidly Adjusting to Information Overload

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