Communications of the ACM is not really out of left field, but June 2008 issue has a special section that I found very interesting. This section is about "Organic User Interfaces (OUI)" which are described as "user interfaces with non-planar displays that may actively or passively change shape via analog physical inputs". This special section is organised under three themes:

• The input device is the output device: Computer displays that are curved, flexible, or in another form, printed on paper, etc. [see Organic Interaction Technologies: From Stone to Skin and What Makes an Interface feel Organic?].
• The form of the display equals its function: When any object, from a credit card to a building, no matter how large, complex, dynamic or flexible will be wrapped with high resolution, full-color interactive graphics [Organic User Interfaces: Designing computers in any Way, Shape and Form].
• The physical shape of computing devices is no longer static: Will be able to fold, bend, twist, pull and tear apart digital devices [Designing Kinetic Interactions for Organic User Interfaces].

These are all very interesting articles and give us an idea about what might be our user interfaces like in the future. However, I wonder if these OUIs will bring solutions to problems that the accessibility community have been addressing, or will they bring new set of challenges. Maybe it will be both but I thought it would be interesting to see which of these technologies will take off. Organic user interfaces

Throughout the history of computing, developments in human-computer interaction (HCI) have often been preceded by breakthroughs in display and input technologies. The first use of a cathode ray tube (CRT) to display computer-generated (radar) data, in the Canadian DATAR [6] and MIT's Whirlwind projects of the early 1950s, led to the development of the trackball and light pen. That development, in turn, influenced Sutherland's and Engelbart's work on interactive computer graphics, the mouse, and the graphical user interface (GUI) during the early 1960s. According to Alan Kay [3], seeing the first liquid crystal display (LCD) had a similar disruptive effect on his thinking about interactivity at Xerox PARC during the early 1970s. His vision of Dynabook led to the development of Smalltalk, the Alto GUI (1973), and eventually, the Tablet PC [2]…

Full Paper: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1349026.1349033
Full Proceedings: Communications of the ACM, June 2008, Volume 51, Number 6.

Labels: communications, input, Organic user interfaces, output