… at least it seems that way with the new BlackBerry Storm I got last week, to replace my BlackBerry Bold (that I loved). I never realized my thumbs were that huge until I tried to type on the on-screen keyboard,… and kept typing the wrong letter. Even with the ‘auto correct’ activated, I wasn’t coming anywhere near the right word. I admit there is some nifty technology at work here. The visual color cues based on ones gently touching the surface, and then the semi-haptic feedback when pressing the glass to ‘select’, are two such examples. I was about ready to call it quits and go back to my Bold when I remembered I went through a similar experience when I initially got the BB Bold. I convinced myself I just had to get used to this new device. As I painfully struggled through email after email (of which I get several hundred a day),… I began to reflect on just what it was that was making it so difficult. I concluded that it wasn’t the device as much as it was the small-scale ergonomics at play. Simply put,… everything was in a new place (wrists, hands, fingers, and thumbs) and I had to repeat these micro-gestures over-and-over until they would become my new ‘norm’.
It’s almost humorous that my Storm newbie struggles were on a week that I visited Microsoft Research in Seattle,… specifically the group dedicated to Microsoft’s new Surface technologies, where the gestures get bigger not smaller. Here I was dynamically shifting from thumbing on my BB Storm glass surface, to gesturing with my hand across a large glass surface. From moving, rotating and shifting knuckles and finger tips,… to moving, rotating and shifting hands, elbows and shoulders. At one point I was handed an associate’s laptop computer as he was signed into the airlines web site, to print my return boarding pass,… and here we go again, but now moving, rotating and shifting fingers and wrists. I guess this is what they mean by a whole body experience. No chance of repetitive strain injury (RSI) or cumulative trauma disorder (CTD) here, what with the almost continuous shifting from one form of information interaction to another, one gradient of ergonomics to another.
Continuously re-learning a growing number of input protocols doesn’t sound like the best user-centered approach to interactive technologies. But neither does believing one interface method is going to cover every form of information request. So maybe the ideal is some form of middle ground,… where users have a core set of ‘universal’ tools for most everyday tasks, and then an array of ‘specialized’ tools for unique or high-performance tasks. And maybe the core set of tools are very personal (owned by the individual), and the broader set of alternative interactive tools are shared (owned in common by a group or team,… or made available on-demand as needed). This makes sense from a cost and mobility perspective as well. Individual users will want their personal tools to move with them from location to location (I never go anywhere without my BlackBerry). But a large digital interactive wall or high-end telepresence system for group collaboration,… is something you would move to, when you had the need to use it. Making this as easy a transition as possible, from individual to group, and having our interfaces AND information shift seamlessly as well, is the ultimate objective,… and one we are working on.
Work (and Life) is going to come at us from every direction, at an ever increasing pace,… that we can be assured of. Content, available information, is growing faster than we can even predict. And we’re all on the move, constantly. So matching our task with our information need with our location is the combination that will unlock effectiveness. Finding that combination, and finding it faster than the next guy,… promises to provide a competitive edge. I’ll eventually get used to my new BlackBerry Storm. And just in time for them to replace it with something new (and they will claim better). After all, one never wants to let their thumbs get too comfortable. But my hope would be that we, teaming with other research groups, will one day crack the code on how this ‘ecology’ of devices seamlessly responds to the information demands of individuals/groups,… as they move from task-to-task,… and from location-to-location. Thumb wrestling anyone …?
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