Apple Piles Resurrected in Student UI Prototype
posted Saturday, January 27th, 2007 by Andy GoreI stumbled over this video on YouTube, which demonstrates “BumpTop,” a 3D realization of the desktop metaphor using a pen for input. It’s really pretty brilliant what the students at University of Toronto’s Dynamic Graphics Project have achieved here:
The work here is so smartly done, it’s not even lessened by the fact that it looks to be taken directly from Apple’s Piles project, which started in the company’s Human Interface Group (HIG) in the late ’80s. The first public appearance of Piles was in 1992, when HIG issued a paper on the User Interface concept (check out this Bruce Tognazzini column where he gives a nice description of Piles, about half way down the page. Bruce was the founder of HIG.)
Those who know me, know I’ve always been fascinated with the science of the human-machine interface, and how to make it work better for the human half of the equation. This probably explains my early attraction to Macintosh platform and my career as a content strategist and information architect (and for those who know me well, Design Nazi).
That fascination keeps me trolling the web for new ideas in usability. In my daily search for inspiration, I see a lot of concepts that are recycled from other people’s ideas, like what these students have developed using the Piles concept.
Of course, I have no way of knowing for sure if they’ve seen Apple’s Piles or were inspired by that work – although if they weren’t, it’s one of the most impressive cases of parallel evolution I’ve seen in some time.
Inspired or not, derivative or not, I hope someone in a position to bring this concept to market sees this video. The interface metaphor here is really pretty brilliant, and would make a great UI for, say, an intelligent phone.
Apple, you listening? Intelligent Phone? i-Phone? Piles for iPhone?
February 4th, 2007 at 7:04 am
This looks very cool. However, it also looks a bit complex to learn, increasing the learning curve for older and younger users and new users. That said, it would be a very powerful set of tools for the intermediate to power-users, and I personally do not feel all tools should be needed all the time, allowing for easy things for basic users and more complex and powerful tools for heavy users. I hope someone at Apple is watching and either reviews the Piles work or sees the value in this work.
February 4th, 2007 at 10:04 am
I don’t necessarily think this would be a good interface for a desktop system, but imagine it on an iPhone? This is a very nice way to manage a complex array of documents (and document types) with a minimal amount of screen real estate.
Then again, it might work for a desktop as well. I agree it’s a bit more complex than the standard UI most computers sport today. On the other hand, to be able to do the things this UI can do in a standard desktop metaphor is actually *a lot * harder than it is here (such as search through a through a large collection of unrelated documents quickly, or reorganize docs in multiple locations.)
April 12th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
would be great combined with a multitouch display(http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/) imagion the ease of use in that case, but while we’re still bound to a pointing device like a mouse(the movie refers to tablets i think witch are still a bit expensive and only used by artists) it seems like a hassle, like i want to spend time cleaning up that desk aswell…. no thanks!