Perhaps the most unusual interface in the film is a game seen when Theo visits his cousin Nigel for a meal and to ask for a favor. Nigel’s son Alex sits at the table silent and distant, his attention on a strange game that it’s designer, Mark Coleran, tells me is called “Kubris,” a 3D hybrid of Tetris and Rubik’s Cube.
Alex operates the game by twitching and sliding his fingers in the air. With each twitch a small twang is heard. He suspends his hand a bit above the table to have room. His finger movements are tracked by thin black wires that extend from small plastic discs at his fingertips back to a device worn on his wrist. This device looks like a streamlined digital watch, but where the face of a clock would be are a set of multicolored LEDs arranged in rows. These LEDs flicker on and off in inscrutable patterns, but clearly showing some state of the game. There is an inset LED block that also displays an increasing score.
The game also features a small, transparent, flat screen that rests on the table in front of him. It displays a computer-generated cube, similar to a 5×5 Rubik’s Cube, made up of smaller transparent cubes that share colors with the LEDs on his wrist. As Alex plays, he changes the orientation of the cube, and positions smaller cubes along the surface of the larger.
Alex plays this game continually during the course of the scene. He is so engrossed in it that when Nigel asks him twice to take his pills, he doesnt even register the instruction. Nigel must yell at him to get Alex to comply.
Though the exact workings of the game are a mystery, it serves to illustrate in a technological way how some of the younger people in 2027 disengage from the horror of the world through games that have been designed for addiction and obsession.
Though most everyone in the audience left Minority Report with the precrime scrubber interface burned into their minds (see Chapter 5 of the book for more on that interface), the film was loaded with lots of other interfaces to consider, not the least of which were the wearable devices.
Precrime forearm devices
These devices are worn when Anderton is in his field uniform while on duty, and are built into the material across the left forearm. On the anterior side just at the wrist is a microphone for communications with dispatch and other officers. By simply raising that side of his forearm near his mouth, Anderton opens the channel for communication. (See the image above.)
There is also a basic circular display in the middle of the posterior left forearm that displays a countdown for the current mission: The time remaining before the crime that was predicted to occur should take place. The text is large white characters against a dark background. Although the translucency provides some visual challenge to the noisy background of the watch (what is that in there, a Joule heating coil?), the jump-cut transitions of the seconds ticking by commands the user’s visual attention.
On the anterior forearm there are two visual output devices: one rectangular perpetrator information (and general display?) and one amber-colored circular one we never see up close. In the beginning of the film Anderton has a man pinned to the ground and scans his eyes with a handheld Eyedentiscan device. Through retinal biometrics, the pre-offender’s identity is confirmed and sent to the rectangular display, where Anderton can confirm that the man is a citizen named Howard Marks.
Wearable analysis
Checking these devices against the criteria established in the combadge writeup, it fares well. This is partially because it builds on a century of product evolution for the wristwatch.
It is sartorial, bearing displays that lay flat against the skin connected to soft parts that hold them in place.
They are social, being in a location other people are used to seeing similar technology.
It is easy to access and use for being along the forearm. Placing different kinds of information at different spots of the body means the officer can count on body memory to access particular data, e.g. Perp info is anterior middle forearm. That saves him the cognitive load of managing modes on the device.
The display size for this rectangle is smallish considering the amount of data being displayed, but being on the forearm means that Anderton can adjust its apparent size by bringing it closer or farther from his face. (Though we see no evidence of this in the film, it would be cool if the amount of information changed based on distance-to-the-observer’s face. Writing that distanceFromFace() algorithm might be tricky though.)
There might be some question about accidental activation, since Anderton could be shooting the breeze with his buddies while scratching his nose and mistakenly send a dirty joke to a dispatcher, but this seems like an unlikely and uncommon enough occurrence to simply not worry about it.
Using voice as the input is cinegenic, but especially in his line of work a subvocalization input would keep him more quiet—and therefore safer— in the field. Still, voice inputs are fast and intuitive, making for fairly apposite I/O. Ideally he might have some haptic augmentation of the countdown, and audio augmentation of the info so Anderton wouldn’t have to pull his arm and attention away from the perpetrator, but as long as the information is glanceable and Anderton is merely confirming data (rather than new information), recognition is a fast enough cognitive process that this isn’t too much of a problem.
All in all, not bad for a “throwaway” wearable technology.
