“It would be trivial to design a better interface than DOOM if the goal was to kill the bad guys as quickly as possible: give me a 2D map of the area with icons for enemy troops and let me drop bombs on them by clicking the icons.”

um, ok.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_Command

now on your xbox 360 arcade!

btw-

http://www.virtuworlds.com/3DeZine_01/features/interface.php

heres the essay article i originally wrote for a Virtual worlds magazine- that never got past its bubble.. in 1996.

I was asked to update it for this usage, and i again updated it for 2001 web3d rebirth at the DUX conference in SF then.

time again.
the basics never die:)

Production value for Marketing/ Media does rise as medias offer more capabilties, and then they become a fashion of acceptable- as flash did vs. painted animation cells, and as realtime 3d as machinima now has as an animation “style”.

the best usability test i can offer is the last decade:)

best
c3

Programs like PicLens, Apple’s CoverFlow, and the desktops are successful because they aim at specific kinds of tasks (browsing large numbers pictures, selecting albums, or shuffling papers on your desk). The examples you cite at the top have struggled because they try to shoehorn all tasks into a single metaphor.

If you haven’t seen it, Apple recenty introduced 3D transforms into their supported CSS profiles, to augment the 2D transforms they already had, and plan to support 3D manipulation of web content in Safari on all platforms. Expect much (sometimes awkward) experimentation.

For a fine reference on how the mind uses physical metaphors for even the most “abstract” concepts, I recommend George Lakoff’s linguistics work, especially “Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things” and “Where Mathematics Comes From.” Lakoff’s arguments posit that even our most abstract concepts are really built-up from our experiences in the physical world, and those metaphors reveal themselves in our language: whether spoken natural language or complex idioms like math, politics, or design. It’s just how primate brains work.

I’m confident is the growth of 3D. Compare the variety of not-quite-there examples, say, to the incredible variety of attempted flying machines at the beginning of the 20th Century, or the diversity of body plans in the Pre-Cambrian period. Succeed or fail business-wise, all these 3D interfaces reflect a natural desire to shape information in ways that are closer to how we naturally think and act. Ben’s reference to physical interaction devices mirrors this desire perfectly.

kb

The issue being supposedly, that when “windows” would start piling up on top of one another, users would get confused about where their previous window went. They thought they just “disappeared” or somehow were closed… they didn’t understand how to “get them back”.

I actually heard a great RL story of this happening to someone’s mother, and to illustrate the concept of windows, he spread out a stack of magazines on the floor and said “See, the windows are like these magazines. Just because you can’t see them all, doesn’t mean they’re not there *proceeds to drag magazines out of the way*”.

IMO, this is just one example of where a 3D content navigation system might be helpful (I say that with a big “might”). In some of your examples above, we see panels that are skewed allowing more to be seen by the user at once. Perhaps this is more natural navigation to some folks?

I’m a big believer in catering to the users’ mental model when it comes to software. Apple has obviously been very successful with this, using real-world metaphors throughout their interfaces. If 3D can better accomplish this- great!

I also would be very interested to find some good research on the subject tho, myself.

Point 2 mentioned above is really just a matter of technology penetration, though.

Products like

http://www.3dconnexion.com/3dmouse/spacenavigator.php

let you navigate 3D worlds way more easily, but are not well known and don’t have drivers for every virtual world, because of lack of standardization in virtual world API’s.

– Ben G