Minority Report Must Die!

This Sci-Fi flick came out 8 long years ago. It was a pretty good movie, I watched it several times. It got a 7.7 out of 10 points on imdb. Cool.

But isn’t it time to move forward and stop using these same old photos of Tom Cruise gesturing in front of a glass wall UI at UX conferences when you want to express what “awesome” UIs are? At a recent conference in New York City a keynote speaker showed one of these infamous photos again, saying: “This is what we all want.” Then she showed a slide with some standard chart types (bar charts, pie charts, etc.) and said: “And this is what we have.” Even if I understood the commonality of a data glove enabled surface UI and pie charts, what I don’t get is: who actually wants to use the UI from Minority Report for real tasks in the real work life? For gaming it would be cool, but then: the Kinect controller for the Xbox 360 is technically more advanced and way more fun.

The way the UI is presented in Minority Report though, it’s something that you use during work for carrying out analytical tasks. Do you really want to execute these kinds of tasks while standing with your arms raised to gesture? 8 years after the movie and now that we have experiences with commercial multi-touch devices like the Microsoft Surface I believe we understand the ergonomic impact of the Minority Report UI. I don’t want to be a party-pooper, but I argue for considering more factors than just coolness and awesomeness.

There’s a nice book on the bare basics of ergonomics.  Here’s what is says about two major issues with the Minority Report UI:

- Standing for long periods tires the back and legs. When sitting the body is better supported because several support surfaces can be used: floor, seat, backrest, armrest, and work surface.

- Unsupported and raised arms result in neck and shoulder complaints.

So what do you prefer: being cool under physical pain or going about your tasks in a comfortable way? The former is fluff for movies, the latter is ergonomics for the real world. This is not to say that there cannot be futuristic UIs that look & feel great and at the same time don’t cause physical problems. So let’s forget about Minority Report already and move on!