I’ve been thinking and reading a lot today about the announcements Microsoft made at its CES keynote. I find it odd that the company showed off the Surface 2.0 at an event aimed at consumers when this technology is not planned to be sold to consumers but in fact businesses. Yes, the people who actually interact with the new Surface will be consumers of some kind but not directly of Surface.
Surface’s presence at CES is a surprise to many people and following the announcement it seems to have received a greater online presence than I have ever seen before; its blog, Twitter feed and Facebook account have all received an increase in activity. Perhaps this is only a temporary condition though.
Paul Thurrott believes that the alternative UI will be a “tiled interface” which could suggest a Windows Phone 7 UI influence. The Metro UI used on Windows Phone 7 uses tiles and typography for its interface, not unlike the design of some of the software in the Office Labs video of how we will use technology in 2019.
What I have noticed from the videos is that actually the new Surface 2.0 UI uses rectangles and tiles, in a similar way to Windows Phone 7 and some software within the Office Labs’ video, unlike the Surface 1.0 UI which featured a more rounded and curvy UI. In the below pic you can see the more rectangular, “tiled” design on the main Surface screen.
People have often said that the Surface UI would make a good tablet UI but sadly the Surface devices aren’t designed in any way to be mobile. Unless, of course, the UI was ported onto devices designed to be mobile and which feature a touch screen. What if Microsoft plan to use the Surface UI, or elements of it, for the rumoured alternative UI for Windows 8 (or whatever it might be called). Microsoft will have learnt a lot about which UI and UX designs work with touch screen through Surface so Surface 2.0 should offer better touch features and capabilities, surely then this is Microsoft’s best bet for a tablet UI for Windows.
As it was Microsoft who made the prediction of what the future will look like in 2019 so why not make the future look like that.
We can be pretty sure that the next version of Windows will use Kinect as a way to interface with the computer so surely we also saw another aspect of the way people will be able to use the next version of Windows. I’d like to point out that when the new Surface is mounted on a wall it looks very similar to the interface for Kinect. Could it be then the alternative UI for the next version of Windows wont just be for tablet PCs but will be the UI for controlling the PC with voice and hands-free gestures also?
It appears that the same UI should be used for both hands-free controlling of screens and for actually touching screens, an interesting thing to note I think.
After thinking about it I am now quite confident that everything shown off at Microsoft’s keynote was shown off to show what was coming in Windows 8. With the “tiled”, Metro UI of Windows Phone 7 being used for both the touch and hands free interfaces of Windows and with the best practices and designs for interfacing with a screen learnt from the Surface and Kinect teams.
I think Microsoft have cleverly shown off the alternative UI for Windows 8 by introducing and showcasing these select products at CES.
