At the recent Web Directions South 08 (WDS08) conference I saw and touched a (demonstration) Microsoft Surface table for the first time. While thought provoking the table was underwhelming, a couple of aspects of the user experience of Surface did make an impression on me though:

- Removed from an appropriate context of use (stylish night club/hotel lobby as depicted in the promotional videos) the table is uninteresting. The value of this particular configuration of technology, a large touch screen set into a table top, may be determined by where it is situated and specific situations would suggest suitable software applications, e.g. tools for flirting in a bar. On the floor of a tradeshow applications I saw like a virtual piano & photo organising tool seemed pointless.

- As it’s multi-touch more than one person can interact with the table simultaneously, but each users interactions can conflict with another users intentions e.g. a user may resize a photo over the top of one another user is trying to view. This means users need to interact with each other over and above (hah!) the feedback that software provides to understand each others intentions & perhaps modify their own interactions as a result – kind of as if two users were griping the same mouse.

Some interesting related links:

• Official site of Microsoft Surface – check out the videos especially
• Wikipedia entry for Surface
• Blog post about field observations users and Microsoft Surface
• A parody of the Microsoft Surface promotional video