This followed an email from Tim about the playful user interface at etsy, for instance the colour browser which is particularly interesting to us, as Tim wrote a prototype for a similar thing for the MoMA.Guide a year or so ago. So it reminded me that when I was on holiday I was thinking we needed to start have a discussion on the current developments in user interface technology. Not only in terms of original methods of existing navigation, but also what people are doing to reinvent the way we interact with electronic media.

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One of the big pushes lately has come from Apple with iPhone/iPod touch. Some of the advances they've made are really impressive. The way they've junked the need for half the necessary buttons with gestural motions; the way that they've tested it all so much that you don't ever have to know how anything works, you just guess and it always does what you want. Videos of the interface don't really do it justice, when you play with it it just feels right. And the interesting thing is that, despite the much trumpeting of the multi-touch technology, the only use that is made of this is in the photo-pinch (admittedly, this still feels very cool). So a lot can be learnt just for single touch screen, albeit single touch screen with a high input resolution.

The other place where large strides have been made is on the Nintendo DS (and to a lesser extent the Wii) as well. This is think is particularly interesting to Cogapp, as they have successfully managed to engage a whole demographic that traditionally were intimidated by gaming devices/computers. They've done this by removing any barrier to the game, by removing the interface to the game.

On the DS the first game to do this successfully was Brain Training. This was the first successful title to tap into the 'non-game' market that the DS thrives in and went on to sell 4 million copies worldwide. The premise was that if you train your brain for 10 minutes a day doing simple exercises you can reduce your 'brain age', it was marketed at the older people who don't play games traditionally. One of the barriers to these sort of people playing games in the past has been no only the subject matter, but the interface to the game.If you think of an average Playstation game, the player has to memorise the placement of over 12 buttons, and control 2 analogue joysticks simultaneously. With Brain Training, they basically trashed the entire interface, and utilised those interactive techniques we all use without thinking: writing, speaking, touching. The game made heavy use of speech and handwriting recognition, so there was no interface to learn. The DS is held sideways like a book to make it feel even more natural.Nintendo then went on to use these techniques in their more traditional 'hardcore' games, like the new Zelda on the DS, where they've again removed any interface to the game, everything is done via points, clicks and gestural motions.

With the Wii, they're going down a similar track, and have had success with Wii sports, which seems to capture everybody's imagination due to its gestural mimicking of real-life sports using the Wii controllers much publicised motion sensing capabilities. The other interesting feature of the Wii controller is the built in vibration, which acts like simple haptic feedback. If anybody has ever tried entering their credit card details via an Xbox 360 joy-pad and an on screen keyboard, they can understand how frustrating the process can be. With the Wii on screen keyboard, not only is the pointing mechanism easier to use, but you can actually feel each key button as you move across it, making is more intuitive.So, with another kiosk build approaching, with a potential audience that maybe aren't completely comfortable with interacting with traditional computer user interfaces, what can we take from these advances? And what other advances have people seen that need to be looked at?