A Day Made of Glass

I just stumbled across the short clip "‪A Day Made of Glass", which explores a hypothetical (distant) future, in which almost all surfaces are made of touch-sensitive glass. It’s a bit like Minority Report but more believable and without Tom Cruise.

At present, developers and designers still have a finite amount of screen types, sizes and resolutions to design for. However, this is already proving to be a complex exercise, given the number of constraints. Nevertheless, due to the physical limits of current displays, some ideas are just impossible to realise.

It is therefore both refreshing and daunting to see how these future display surfaces are extending or even eliminating physical boundaries. As I am writing this, I have about 15 windows open, forcing me to constantly switch between them – I wish I could just throw them all on a glass display table or wall to see them all at once!

It’s also interesting to think how versatile, dynamic and fluid these next-generation user interfaces will have to become in order to work effectively on screens of indefinite sizes and varying orientation.

Whether we’re years or decades away from “A Day Made of Glass” is a different question altogether. To be confronted with these possible futures, however, certainly keeps you on your professional toes.