Frog’s Mark Rolston: the ‘Minority Report’ interface is a ‘terrible idea’

I hate that model. On one hand, it’s been great for a user interface to have become so recognizable by the general public. But really, it’s a terrible idea. Few people are going to stand up and wave their arms around like that to operate a computer. In the movie, Tom Cruise is doing a lot of object selection, sorting, and editing. Those things work best with small hand movements. We require more motor control for that kind of work. But there is an emerging field of computing that does take advantage of more ‘phatic’ interactions. Doing simple things like turning lights on, opening doors, and signaling yes/no can be done very effective at the kind of full body level that we saw in Minority Report.