PDA, short for Personal Data Assistant, is a data collection device described in the science fiction Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. In the same book, the author also described the concept of a device with no screen and is embedded within the user’s brain, with the appropriate name of BrainPal, which reminds me a lot of the “no-interface interface” concept of today, except that today we are looking at interactions that feels the most natural to users, instead of putting devices in the users’ heads. In this post, I sketched out what I imagine such devices will look like with the information provided by the author.
I imagine that BrainPal, a device that works with one’s very own brain, so I imagine that it would display the user’s actual sight of view, and will have the minimum amount of UI elements, since all commands would be performed through brainpower, such as, thinking of confirming an action instead of hitting a “confirm” button. The only information that I chose to display are:
- An avatar of the user, so that the users have some sort of projection when using this device.
- Selecting targets, there would be different indications for selected and hovering objects so that there are some feedback.
- Information of a hovered object, so that the user can read them in a more intuitive way.
Although the book described the PDA as a hand-held physical product with a touchscreen, I imagine that such a “futuristic” product would be easier to carry around, especially seen that its purpose is to be used during wartime, so I decided that it could be a wearable such as a watch or a wristband; I think it is also not unlikely that such a device has a holographic screen that displays the same information but just bigger and easier to read. The purpose of the physical product, then, is to only display critical information (such as physiological data and notifications) and hold the stylus that was mentioned in the fiction.
