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From Roddenberry to reality: Novel inspiration for GUIs


By Alex Handy


 Alex Handy
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February 21, 2011 —  (Page 1 of 2)
Movie stars have it easy. They can hack servers with a few mouse clicks, and their computers always have the coolest interfaces. But Star Trek pads and Minority-report-style desktop interfaces aren't just science fiction anymore, thanks to the coming wave of tablets and smartphones that offer interactivity possibilities that were previously only available to the imaginations of Hollywood directors.

At the annual Macworld conference in San Francisco, Nathan Shedroff, program chair for the MBA in design strategy at the California College of Arts, and Chris Noessel, interaction designer for interaction design firm Cooper, gave a talk entitled “Make It So: Learning from Science Fiction Interfaces.” The venue was appropriate for such a talk, and the conference is now heavily focused on the iPhone and iPad platforms.

The pair have spent the past three years working on a book that explores the influence of science fiction interfaces on the real world, and vice versa.

Noessel told the story of how the U.S. Army developed a topographical map display system based on the interface seen in a movie. “In the year 2000, a fellow by the name of Douglas Caldwell was petitioned by his son to see a movie about superheroes. In that movie, he saw the solution to a 2,000-year-old problem he'd been working on. The movie was 'X-Men,'” he said.

In the movie, the X-Men use a table-sized display made up of small metal pins that can rise and fall, thus displaying the terrain where the heroes must perform super deeds. “The reason this interface was of interest to Douglas is that he worked in the U.S. Army topographical mapping group. He has to model the terrain, package it, ship it to a [battleground], and hope he didn't get it wrong," said Noessel.

"He saw in the X-Men movie a way to show topographical maps. Within four years, he'd written an RFC and had built the Xenovision. It's an array of computer-controlled pins that can rise and fall according to any topography, with a thin skin on top that can be vacuum-sealed for a smooth surface they can project a satellite image upon. They can even model terrain on Mars and for historic battlefields. It's a wonderful device, and it all came about because Douglas watched the X-Men."


Related Search Term(s): user interfaces

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