Cool is Perishable

I saw a demonstration today of a kinetic user interface - a technology that is presently being used in video games to enable the user to control their in-game character without a physical device, by means of a sensor that detects their body movement. It's an idea that has been around for years, but I'd never seen a demonstration. I was impressed.

Then the question arose of putting this same technology to practical use. Wouldn't it be cool if you could use this kind of interface to buy stocks? The problem-solving part of my brain went to work on it immediately: each of your positions could be represented by an object that you could touch and move, zoom in on, bring up relevant information, all by physical motions that would be entirely natural and intuitive. It could definitely be done, and it would definitely be cool.

But before I had chased the butterfly too far, the analytical part of my brain went to work: what could you do with this new technology that really is new? What can you do with it that can't already be done? Aside of the novelty factor, how could such a thing deliver a unique value that would make it compelling in the long run, after the novelty had worn off?

And at that point, I was stuck for an answer.

Certainly, you could have access to more information - but only by virtue of it being a larger screen. A computer with a large monitor could do the same. And certainly, you could visualize information differently - but the same method of visualization could be presented on a two-dimensional screen regardless of whether you used a kinetic interface or mouse-and-keyboard.

And, as a matter of fact, a keyboard is much more useful for dealing with that kind of data. It takes between two and five keystrokes to enter most exchange symbols and click "enter" - much easier than having to use your whole body to try to spell out the words, or find them in a long list of options, or hunt through a virtual toy box of brightly colored three-dimensional objects. And it likewise takes a few taps to enter a number of shares to buy or sell.

All things considered, the kinetic interface doesn't add anything of value to the transaction. It doesn't make it easier - in fact, it would take a lot more time and physical energy to perform a task that can be done quite simply using the existing keyboard interface. And as to making that same interface accessible to someone in a wheelchair ... probably not going to happen.

I won't discount the possibility that there may be something I'm not seeing - that in a few days or weeks or months, I will be roused from sleep by a "eureka" moment when I realize something that hadn't occurred to me before. But for now, putting my creative and analytical skills to the task, I've come up empty.

At least for this purpose, the kinetic interface offers nothing of value that would make it a better way to do the same task. It would be different, and it would be cool ... but "cool" is quite perishable, and as soon as the novelty wore off, the user would realize that the "old" way of doing things was less difficult and time consuming.

I have the sense that this is a common problem when it comes to new technology, and the very thing that fueled the dot-com boom and led to the subsequent crash. New, different, and cool are certainly wondrous - but in the long run, useful, simple, and straightforward will win out.