You are not the one

Recently I was working on a project I’m making in AR using some webAR tech I’ve been putting together and I was making a puzzle. It was a recreation basically of the crypt puzzle from 7th Guest, except this time you could also walk around and take a look from more perhaps clueful angles.

Halfway through the session I leaned over and started to fiddle with another puzzle that was halfway done, this one just a quick test of the Queen’s puzzle but with an Escher twist.

Then it struck me, these things were not actually connected, heck, not even on the same server, and I had just casually switched between them without even thinking about it.

I do this on the desktop too, somewhat, it’s not quite as natural, since I have to bring the thing I’m working on forward or tile my windows so it’s in a place where I can multitask and context switch easily.

But I can’t do this easily on mobile devices. Sure iPad has split screen now, but… I never use it or even remember the sequence to use it, it’s not natural. And on phones? Strictly a single screen affair.

The head display that wins the spatial desktop will not have a single context like mobile devices, it will seamlessly switch between contexts like my webAR example. If the underlying OS doesn’t support that, embrace that, live that, then no matter how great the hardware is that device will not. be. the. one.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.