Don Norman just published a very interesting article on natural user interfaces, here's a quote
Gestural systems are no different from any other form of interaction. They need to follow the basic rules of interaction design, which means well-defined modes of expression, a clear conceptual model of the way they interact with the system, their consequences, and means of navigating unintended consequences. As a result, means of providing feedback, explicit hints as to possible actions, and guides for how they are to be conducted are required. Because gestures are unconstrained, they are apt to be performed in an ambiguous or uninterruptable...
It seems like we're not alone in our vision of having all that is needed at a certain time, and for a certain purpose, in a certain place. Let me suggest you reading this post from ChaniBlog, which was promptly circulated in the itsme tech team by Vincenzo.
Here are some brief quotes from the post:
What I think of as an “activity” is the entirety of what I’m working on at the moment – be it a kde-related project or a university course or just reading lots of comics. :) This activity includes several windows from several applications. It includes files...
It's been some months since we showed (on this site) our prototype. Of course, our code has evolved – both in its visible part and in what's running underneath (Guglielmo). In this video, you'll see the itsme graphical user interface as it is now (well, some days ago: October 2009) and a quick demo of the functions we have:
interaction with panels and venues: re-arranging them, filtering contents with channels and subvenues, drag and drop, and so forth. We omitted showing how to create a new venue and renaming it, but it is possible, of course :)
working with Linux applications:...
