Pretty cool new Mac interface

[Brad Nunnally]

http://tactiva.com/tactadrawmoviesmall.html

This video shows off the demo of a new interface for what looks to be macs. Hope ya enjoy.

[Ross Mead]

One word:

... awesome!

 :-D

[Bryan]

As I'm watching this I can't help but think (besides the obvious "cool") how this could potentially be applied to prototyping sessions.  While low fidelity prototypes are GREAT for testing potential designs with users, they truly fall short if you want to present to a client.  Part of our complaint is the lack of a convenient means of creating medium fidelity prototypes.

The cardinal rule is to never show a client high fidelity prototypes as they get the mucho wrong idea.  Most of the time we resort to Visio or even Power Point to create the medium fidelity versions.  This is a pain in the ass as visio is moderately designed for it and PPT lowly so.  This tractipad could have great potential for creating medium fidelity prototypes if applied correctly.

[Ross Mead]

Wow, that sounds like a great idea!  Maybe that would make "paper"-prototyping actually enjoyable!

... yeah, I definitely didn't enjoy the paper aspect of HCI... :-P

[Bryan]

Unfortunately Ross, that's not exactly what I meant.  Low fidelity prototypes (a.k.a. paper) will never be replaced (never implying not any time soon.)  If they manage to make software intuative enough to create prototypes as fast as you can draw, I'll be the first to invest in it. Trust me.  That being said however the need for medium fidelity prototypes wasn't pushed too hard in the 321 course.  They are VERY important however.  When you are presenting to a client the last thing you want to show them is a drawing for their mockup.  However, it's almost as bad to show them a software created mockup.  The end result is making mockups that look nice (clean edges, easily read proper sized fonts) using some random program.  I personally use visio and (if a better option is absent) power point.

I think this kind of technology could be very useful for creating those mockups.