ORGANIC USER INTERFACES

BY ROEL VERTEGAAL AND IVAN POUPYREV, GUEST EDITORS

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]:

“... Another thing that we saw in 1968 was a tiny 1” square first flat panel display down at the University of Illinois. We realized it was going to be a matter of years until you could put all the electronics... on the back of a flat panel display, which I later came to call the Dynabook.”