The future of the user interface

According to foreign media reports, Planetary is an ipad app launched this month, which is a "solar system" to visualize your music collection, with stunning visual effects, although at first glance it seems a little too fancy. "Solar system" means: Stars are music artists, planets are albums, satellites are albums; you browse and listen to music as if it were a universe. An evaluation of the app on itunes is "visually appealing, but it's no use." "This person gave planetary a rating of 2 stars.

But this comment does not come to the point, because planetary's cool design shows the potential of data visualization as a new interface. Whether it's on your mobile phone or on a tablet computer, you'll see more and more applications using data visualization (planetary).

Bloom Studio, a start-up company in San Francisco, unveiled the planetary earlier this month. The company said it was "the first of a new visual discovery application" and pledged to launch more such applications in the coming months. They plan to use this type of visualization technology to "get you to explore and participate in social networks, video streaming services, and location-based applications in a whole new way!"

Visualization of information as a new control interface

Planetary is unique in that it does not rely on traditional software control and design patterns (such as playing buttons, scrolling down the track list, or even flipping through album covers), but is controlled by data visualization.

Sterling, a futurist and writer, Sterling in a recent interview about planetary:

"One of the most notable places about Bloom's software, I think, is that it uses information visualization as a new control interface." It's not as simple as renovating old-fashioned music machine buttons. This whole thing is produced in real time. You can run the code on it, play the music, and use it to make the media! This is a major advance. ”

Planetary the dataset (in this case, music) into a "tactile and dynamic visual object", the wired interview said. Imagine what it would be like to use this technology in the data of social networks, geographies, media and real-world objects (IoT)?

"Killer mode" for application design

At the beginning of Planetary's release, CNET interviewed Bloom's co-founder, Ben Cauvenni (Ben cerveny). He first explained the origins of the company's name: "We will make the intangible data tangible." We're going to make this thing flourishing (Bloom). ”

Cauvenni told CNET that if there were better structured data, Bloom's data visualization application would become more powerful:

“...... We're also looking at metadata from other sources, because the ID3 tags posted on the itunes track are a bit unreliable. More structured data brings a lot of possibilities, allowing us to see the constellation of music in countless new ways. ”

Cauvenni says the tablet computer has brought a new era in the user interface and says Bloom can help define a "killer model" for application design.

But the big question is whether Bloom can create something that goes beyond the "one that looks a little flashy music app," and really changes the media and social networking experience.

2-Star reviewers may be a bit harsh, but he's right, planetary is not that useful. But it clearly indicates the future of the user interface, and Bloom is likely to become an industry star.