BumpTop - Method and Computer Program for Enriching the Desktop
Current virtual desktops bear little to no resemblance compared to the look and feel of a real world desktop. A workspace in the physical world typically has piles of documents, binders and other objects arranged in a way that provides considerable subtle information to the owner. For example, items are often casually placed but their spatial position and orientation are usually meaningful. Closer items can indicate urgency, and piles of items are “automatically” ordered chronologically because new items are typically placed on top. This casual organization, prevalent in the real world, differs greatly from the GUI desktop which forces users to immediately file their documents into a rigid hierarchy. Filing typically requires more effort than piling and has been shown to have other negative effects such as encouraging premature storage of low value documents, or retaining useless documents because of the effort that went into filing them.The Opportunity
Bumptop enables causal organization of documents as one would on a real desk, using piling rather than explicit filing as the primary organization style. Bumptop does do so by using a variety of novel interaction and visualization techniques for implicitly and explicitly creating, manipulating and organization piles and items with the piles.
The Solution
By adding physics to the desktop via a physics simulator, objects attain the ability to be dragged and tossed around with the feel and realistic characterizations of friction and mass, thereby allowing objects to collide, displace others and be more naturally organized. This makes interaction feel more continuous and analog, rather than the discrete style imposed by digital computing, and therefore allows users to utilize the strategies they employ in their real world environment to both implicitly and explicitly convey information about objects. The end result is more valuable organization of information in a manner where users are not forced to commit to categorization, such as the immediate naming and filling of documents. The aim is to leverage users’ spatial memory and knowledge of how things move physically in the real world for much-improved desktop organization.
The Technology
Physics-based movement of objects is simulated with rigid body dynamics and collision detection and frictional forces. When objects collide, they bump against and displace one another in a physically realistic fashion. A simulated gravitational force keeps the objects “on the ground”. Bumptop presents users with a perspective 2½D view onto a planer desktop surface titled 25 degrees with respect to the camera. Motion is constrained to the desktop by the walls enclosing it. The wall corners provide a place for documents to pile up on top of each other and act as a landscape feature that aid in cognitive grouping of documents.
Type of Offer: Licensing
« More Software Patents