Starfire

The second video – which I helped to put into the public space – is also from the vision'n'concept department: Starfire by Sun Microsystems 1994.



At CHI ’98 I've attended a presentation by Frank Ludolph on Apple Lisa. Frank had also booth duty at the conference where he spread a couple of VHS tapes of Starfire. What marvelous concepts! Multitouch, voice UI, wall-size displays, tablets with motion and orientation sensors, telepresence for video conferences, among many more...
Years later – in 2005 – I asked Tog for a digital copy. Of course he had one – but no permission for sharing. By chance I was working for Sun at the time and got approval from Sun's VP Juan Carlos Soto to release the video. So please enjoy_



Starfire Director's Cut, Sun 1994

More References

• Starfire at asktog with the original mpeg 4 
• The annotated Starfire script
• 1992’s View of 2004: What Didn’t Happen, and What’s Still to Come (at User Experience 2004 in Amsterdam)
• Video Visions of the Future – A Critical Review (at CHI 2004)

OOo History

Here is a nice info graphic on the history of the OOo universe_

The rise and fall of OpenOffice.org on Prezi

Ivan Sutherland on Leadership

Ivan talked about leadership at Sun's SEED summit 2006. The remarkable event has been captured on tape and is now online.

it is the user's itch that needs to be scratched

The Summer 2007 issue of interfaces contains an article on our User Experience Project. If you are not a member of the British HCI group, you can read “User Experience for OpenOffice.org” on my website.

Quote:

The first rule of open source development is also the reason for an inherent usability problem: "Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch."

The result is a self-referential system – developers develop for themselves rather than for the average user or the target audience. Usability engineering is considered as superfluous extra. However, to provide a good user experience, it is the user's itch that needs to be scratched.

This article presents user experience activities in the context of OpenOffice.org. The author – co-lead of the User Experience Project – will discuss the status of building an open source community of usability professionals to improve the usefulness and usability of the application.

(read more...)

Ivan Sutherland on "Research and Fun"

An Evening with Ivan Sutherland at the Computer History Museum