«The Minority Report meets Google Glass» is the title of the article in New Scientist concerning the work of Barret Enz and his team at the University of Manitoba, on the prospects of creating a personal «cockpit» for handling applications on head-worn display devices.
Specifically, Enz and his team recommend using these devices (the most well-known among them being the famous one even before its wide release, Google Glass) with the purpose of «immersion» of the user in a three-dimensional environment of virtual icons/screens: a «personal cockpit», which allows the user to control his digital life as a pilot controls his airplane.
According to Enz and his colleagues, the user will be able to «pull» what they want into their visual field when needed and then remove them, or «place» them into peripheral vision. Handling and arranging the icons is done via gestures.
To test the whole idea, the team created a virtual personal cockpit of this type. The forward visual field can be «clear» (exactly like the window of an aircraft cockpit), but screens and icons can be placed at its periphery.
The team will present the results of their work at the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Toronto in April.
«All who have tried it so far were thrilled when they saw the sequence of “windows” moving with them. There is no crowding, because the screens are not very close together. Each screen appears just at a touching distance, about half a meter, which we deemed ideal both for viewing and for touch» notes Enz.
