Pattie Maes Pattie Maes, an associate professor in MIT’s Program in Media Arts and Sciences, leads research in human-computer interfaces at MIT’s Media Lab. She recently spoke with MHT associate editor James M. Connolly about the lab and innovation.

“There is a wealth of information available, and most of it these days is digitized. I feel that we still don’t have good ways to know what information may be available and what is relevant to whatever we are currently doing, to be able to access information, especially while we are in the middle of something. The current computers and the interfaces that we use, they are not really the ideal information-accessing devices.

Today’s hardware devices, the iPhone as well, they all assume that you completely shift your attention to the device if you want to access some information. You have to basically completely drop what you are in the middle of and redirect your attention to the screen and use a pointing device, whether it’s the mouse or your own fingers, and then use a keyboard to enter information. It’s very disruptive.”

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(via InfoDesign)