MappingInterface

January 16, 2003

Why do we need Personal Web Sites (PWSs)?

People have a valuable and perishable resource- our minds and our individual knowledge and experience. We invest a great deal of resources in training ourselves, learning our professions and practicing what we have learned. We learn by doing and we learn by failing too- we learn from experience and sometimes we learn more from our failures than we do from our successes.

The concept behind the development of a PWS is that if we host our personal intellectual property (IP) on our PWSs and develop it in a rigorous manner over our entire careers; we have a way of preserving and sharing our expertise with others that has never been available to any generation that has gone before.

How about developing a new Interface for your PWS?

Using a mapping interface for your PWS (Personal Web Site) instead of an icon based GUI may be a more intuitive way for people to find their way around a web site than icons. People are really good at pattern recognition (whatever the experts at IBM may say, the human chess grandmasters can still regularly beat Deep Blue).

So maybe we can try instead something along these lines:

1. use a 3-d photo as your base map instead of icons;
2. as you pass the cursor over the map, links pop up;
3. people may recognize patterns better than lists of icons so that when they return to your site, they will remember how to navigate it much faster and more intuitively;
4. you may want to ‘foley’ the site (add sound effects) to reinforce this.

Using this type of interface really means that the computer screen acts as your ‘third wall’. This is an imaginary, transparent wall that invites the visitor (theater goer, movie viewer, audience member, guest, patron, client or customer, supplier) into your world in a more intimate and involving way.

Imagine the improvements in web navigation that might be possible if the human/Internet interface used standardized images that meant or implied actions that people would clearly and instantly recognize and understand? If for example, a door knob or a door was used for the same purposes on the Internet as in RL (Real Life). What might some of the universal images be and what actions might they imply?

Image	Action Implied
Door	Enter
Door Knob or Key Hole or Lock	Enter Password Protected Area
Computer	Email
Library	Books and Articles Connect to research database
Telephone	Get help or Instant Message
Family Photo	Personal space
File Folder	Transfer files
Diary	Make appointment/Make note
Phone Book	Get a telephone number or email address
Camera	Get Picture
Briefcase	Private stuff
Newspaper	Media Releases/Customized news
Calculator	Get financials/Launch tools
Desk	Bring up today’s agenda
Chair	Book a meeting/Launch automated work settings e.g. bring up today’s agenda, phone numbers for scheduled calls, instant messaging daemon, e-mail interface
PC Cam	Video Conference
Watch	Check the time
Drawer	Get file
Filing cabinet	Get document

The human/computer interface has come a long way—from the teletype, to punch cards, from punch cards to UNIX, from UNIX to the GUI pioneered by Apple’s Macintosh. There is no doubt that the next step (after the next step) will be to move to a much more engaging interface using stereo space.

Stereo space harnesses individual left eye and right eye feeds for graphics, text, animation and video together with sound, vibration and music so that architectural/computer generated spaces can be used in new ways to: educate, entertain, inform, data mine, interact, travel, meet, communicate, work, cooperate, produce, research, consult, sell, market, host and teach—all without the physical requirement of moving people, goods or services around the planet.

Stereo space will, however, require a lot of bandwidth but, as long as Moore’s Law continues to prevail, we can expect a jump to a stereo space interface within the next 20 years. In the meantime, maybe we could attempt an interim step—the use of a map-based interface to provide a warmer, friendlier and more efficient Internet experience than text, icon and graphical interfaces are currently providing.

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it,” Computer Scientist Alan Kay, Founder, Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (Parc).

Dr. Bruce M. Firestone, Ottawa, Canada.

http://www.dramatispersonae.org/DesignEconomics/PersonalWebSite.htm

http://www.dramatispersonae.org/DesignEconomicsFrontPage.htm

http://www.dramatispersonae.org/