Focus points for the Human-Computer Interaction group

Clemens rethinks the prevailing software architecture

PhD student, Clemens Nylandsted Klokmose, has created a French connection. Together with Michel Beaudouin-Lafon he is at the cutting edge of what is possible in the interaction with computers’ user interfaces.

Clemens Nylandsted Klokmose has set himself a challenge. He will chart new methods, which will enable us to work with the interaction between user interfaces, which will belie the traditional perception of a computer being operated using a mouse, keyboard and a screen. 

In collaboration with the French professor, Michel Beaudouin-Lafon, Clemens will conduct research into rethinking the underlying software architecture for modern user interfaces. The research relates to our traditional use of applications when we work on our digital objects and documents.
Clemens appreciates that his project may sound a little hairy. However, the idea behind the whole project is that the development should make everyday life easier for the user. 

“For example, take two programs such as Word and Photoshop. They have a large number of tools that can be used in the layout of a poster. However, if you work in Word you cannot just transfer the document into Photoshop. In some situations files can be converted between the programs, but often you have no other option than to perform image manipulation in Photoshop and transfer the file into Word. This is not particularly desirable”, explains Clemens Klokmose.

 

The toolbox
According to Clemens Klokmose the future no longer belongs to applications such as Word and Photoshop as we know them today.

“In the conceptual universe our focus will shift towards objects and instruments or tools. Will it be possible to achieve a separation between objects and tools, so that they do not have an unnatural dependent relationship?” Meaning that this tool is bound to Photoshop and can only be used on PSD files on a desktop computer.

According to Clemens Klokmose the instruments should deal with objects that are otherwise associated with certain types of files. A drawing instrument should be usable on anything that has a surface, he states.

Similarly, as you could transfer your object from your computer to your PDA, you could also move your instruments around as required. The multitude of instruments is quite simply assembled in a digital toolbox and the instruments retrieved as required.

 “Photoshop is a large and complex program and normal users have no need at all of many of the possibilities provided by the program, so why should they take up space?”, asks Clemens Klokmose.

“Now let us take the example of the poster. Perhaps you are sitting on a train and just want to be able to scale and move some figures around on the same poster. So it is obvious that you can configure your PDA using tools that allow you to perform these simple manoeuvres on the poster”, says Clemens.

If Clemens and Michel succeed in developing the toolbox, it will not just be a paradigm shift in the area of user comfort. The project will also have a long-range political perspective. Just as music is today sold on the Internet as individual tracks, this development will aim at a market in which the user chooses and pays for the instruments that he or she needs.

Totally over the top?
The toolbox is at present a project in its development stage in somewhat unknown terrain.

“We are in the process of writing an article about our work for a conference. We have had problems in finding anything similar in other articles. It is difficult to say whether we are being completely over the top or are the front-runners in this area”, says Clemens Klokmose and continues:

“We can of course say that I am staking my PhD on this project. When it is completed it would be interesting to see whether I could develop the theory in the direction of a commercially-based project”, concludes Clemens Klokmose.