Adaptive Path’s Aurora interface concept unveiled

August 05, 2008 at 8:56 pm

Adaptive Path, the user experience and product development consultancy firm, have just released the first part of a new web interface concept called Aurora, in collaboration with Mozilla. Aurora is their take on how the web browser could evolve and work in the future, by harnessing masses of data within a very fluid and highly interactive user interface.

The Aurora concept video, designed by Jesse James Garrett (he of AJAX fame), demonstrates new ways people could be collaborating over the web, and although the demonstration video is pretty cheesy (mainly due to the shocking acting), the concepts and capability of the browser being proposed here is pretty breathtaking in comparison to what we have in place today.

For example, people, places and items are represented by objects in a three dimensional spatial view and are invoked by a users intuitive gestures. The scenario used illustrates the sharing of data as intrinsic to people's everyday lives, within the context of real time collaboration with other users.

Obviously Aurora isn't being physically built or put into production; Adaptive Path have just given themselves the remit of creating a great browsing experience by stitching together valuable data and entwining it with people's networks. It's being billed as an open conversation on how to evolve the web browser and as part of an ongoing initiative by Adaptive Path and Mozilla to encourage designers and developers to contribute their own visions of the future of the browser. I think everyone would agree the concept and function of the browser could certainly do with some help and this is a step in the right direction.

I'm a big fan of Adaptive Path and the work they do. I think it's great that people are addressing these interface challenges that we currently have and putting them into a future context. Adaptive Path's interface concept video is actually the first part in a four part series of videos demonstrating the potential a browser like Aurora could offer. I'm personally looking forward to understanding a bit more about the thought processes and methodologies that went into creating the Aurora interface concept in the fothcoming installments of this intriguing project. So watch this space.

Filed under:

Data,

Design,

User experience

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