Making your desktop look like your desk top

Computer "desktops" rarely resemble real-life workspaces -- at least, assuming that most people's actual desktops have more in common with the mess I see in front of me than they do with the tidy little icons on my screen.

The BumpTop 3D desktop prototype attempts to extend the desktop metaphor by focusing on "piling instead of filing" -- allowing files to be loosely arranged, piled, sorted, and tossed around the way they are in the physical world.

The idea is to allow users to access information from their "piles" at a glance and to eschew rigid categorization and filing schemes in favor of supporting the more casual organization methods used in the real world.

A paper on the prototype is available here (in PDF). There's also video to look at if you don't have the patience to read the paper -- and if you don't have the patience to view the full 7-minute video , you can even check out the 20-second Hip-Hop version.

(Link via elearningpost)