Microsoft Surface - a new computing revolution? #1

A few of us have been playing with a Microsoft Surface today. It’s a much-hyped device, famous for it’s multi-touch interface and rather high price tag. Multi-touch is clearly becoming the brave new world for User Interface design but the revolution will probably come as an indirect consequence of it, not because of it.

You see we’ve already got multi-touch on a number of popular devices today; mobiles like the iPhone, HTC Touch, Palm and the forthcoming desktop OS’s; Windows 7 and MacOS X Snow Leopard. For these devices multi-touch simply means an interaction with more than one pointing device, usually fingers instead of a mouse or stylus. Users can pinch, scroll, flick, point and drag; which you can also do on a Surface table.

The thing you immediately notice about your interaction with Surface is that the interaction becomes social and collaborative. Using a PC or a mobile is a solitary situation - one person has the pointing device and usually the keyboard. Opportunities to use both at the same time are few and far between (why were we never allowed two mice?). Now you might see two people working together on a PC; as in the short lived eXtreme Programming methodology, or in a Kindergarten class, but one person usually makes the decisions, one at a time. With Microsoft Surface this changes - the environment becomes much more collaborative and everybody has the ability to lean in and interact.

This is certainly going to challenge User Interfaces and how we design them, but more importantly create exciting new opportunities for computing. Just think how we could work in groups all looking and interacting at the same time. Now that’s a paradigm shift, and probably a cause for a computing revolution.