The Best UI Is Your Imagination

Imagine for a moment, you’re way high in the sky… stood upon a white fluffy cloud. It has the texture of the bubbles of a bath… but firmer, more gel-like… and you can pick it up in your hand.

Imagine for a moment, moulding a handful of that cloud into any object you want. Have some fun with it and come back in when you’re ready.

…and now for a moment, come back to where you are, your surroundings and the device you’re reading this on.

Just by reading, you’ve now done in a few seconds what could take minutes or hours, in the finest CAD Software available. Heck, just to write this text on a laptop, I’ve had to:

1. Find laptop, press power button
2. Enter bootup password, wait a minute & then login
3. Wait for the editor to load, while my system interrrupts “Updates are available”
4. …and all the while, I had a vivid image of what I wanted to describe, and make.

What if we could skip all that. What if, we could deliberately tap into that minds-eye. Not for manipulation, but just purely communication, man-to-machine.

It would need to avoid distraction and keep things simple, because, let’s face it… most of our minds are very distracted already.

…but I wonder, is there anything more intuitive, more natural or innate to the human mind, as that ability to step into imagination… that world of wonder, of possibility. You might it call it planning.

Even if you were a cynic, for every idea that befell you, you would see a million ways that idea would fall. It’s still planning.

And, what kind of training would that require? … I mean, “Brenda… can you please stop thinking of your hot date when you send an email?.. we don’t want to see that shit”. Maybe it might require some training.

But then, the more I think about it… the more I realise, that the perfect user interface, is not one out in the world. It can be lost, it can be restrictive… and it can also be too big, to in your face. The world of the imagination comes with ready-made controls, you can zoom in, you can rearrange, you do anything, unconstrained by physics, culture or the people around you.

So far…

I’ve come to the conclusion that current interfaces including brain-machine interfaces are icky… and there exists something far more transformative, and we don’t have to pay for it.

…but the more I think about creating this interface, the more I feel I needn’t bother. I mean, if I try to create something in say, the style of the strongest memories we have: spatial memory, I could borrow some technologies from Hollywood CGI, or 3D gaming… Or I could do what the Greeks did 2,000 years ago and create a memory palace, in my own mind… and in a few seconds, and save years of research and development for a technology that may not exist in my lifetime.

…or what about audio without speakers? Well, that Barbie song¹ proved to me that my head can already play whatever song it chooses to. Again, another non-existant technology beaten. Noise cancellation? Well, tinnitus does the job perfectly.