Interview Segment: Cullen Dudas discusses Copenhagen Project
Logo I had some time today to sit down and talk with a fellow Tech Community member, Cullen Dudas. Over the last year he has been silent working and researching ways to improve the User Experience and make the UI more friendly and able to do more. I had some time to sit down and ask him some questions about the project in general and where the project is intended to go in terms of its overall goal.
Ryan: First off Cullen, its good to speak with you. If you don’t mind me asking? What exactly is the Copenhagen Project?
Cullen: Copenhagen is a User Experience concept that I designed. It is unique in the fact that it manages to bring together classic design, contemporary design, usability, and art.Copenhagen shatters the composite prototypical event patterns people have developed for their OS, Windows.It is a collision of months of research, high visibility, proper affordance, accurate conceptual models, visceral experience, behavioral experience, and reflective experience, all coming together to create an amazing user experience.
Ryan: What made you start this project in the first place?
Cullen: It started with me being board last summer while I was at camp. I just started sketching and eventually it evolved into me having fun and refining designs. I started informally and formally watching friends, family, and acquaintances using Windows and started quantifying their actions and designing around those. I then started making mock ups in Photoshop and around this time, I started developing a ton of theories of how people interact with with computers, etc
Ryan: What is this built off of?
Cullen: The concept is built off of flash at the moment, it was done in Two weeks. To be clear, I learned flash in 2 weeks for the original. This version that you see in the video has been in the works for about a month or two
Ryan: Going from Flash; What platform could you see using that would really allow this to come to life? WPF? .Net Framework maybe?
Cullen: I really think it could be built using Direct3D
Ryan: What Benefits and Functionality would Copenhagen have over say…Windows Vista’s or Windows 7’s interface?
Cullen:We can start by Find and Organize, or FnO. High Visibility makes it easier to fully afford FnO’s full Capabilities. It is built to conform to mental patterns and it is more elegant. There are NUMEROUS studies that support the claim "beautiful things are easier to use" — but you have to find the balance between visceral experience (beauty) and behavioral experience (usability). Its very customizable and the mental boundaries are limitless, you do not have a constricting taskbar holding you back.
You can basically group tasks how YOU like.
Ryan: What other features are in it?
Cullen: There is this concept i like to call Task Module. Where you see the icon appear on the desktop (in the video), you can click that once, and all your apps pop up, exactly how you left them. It could really benefit IT Departments by allowing them to deploy certain work scenarios. Another feature I like is the scrap box which is up at the top. The idea behind that is that you can select any bit of text or URL link and drag it there and it is saved. Allowing you to recall it later.
Ryan: Can we expect a working Prototype soon?
Cullen: Not anytime soon, Way beyond my skill set. Though, I really would love the opportunity to impact the billion Windows users, by trying to make my visions a reality, at Microsoft.
I want to thank Cullen for taking the time to sit down and give us a little more insight on what Copenhagen is all about and we hope to see his work manifested somehow later down the road hopefully in a future version of Windows.
Published
by
BlueScreenOfDeath
on April 17, 2009
