BumpTop, an Ephemeral Space?

Whilst searching the new features available in Windows 7 I happened across BumpTop, showcased at the IBM sponsored TED conference. It works in a Windows 7 environment so I downloaded the free version to see whether it a gimmick or a more transient way to organise workspaces. What attracted me to BumpTop was not the 3D environment, but the way items on the desktop are given emphasis and hierarchy through making them small or large. They may also be grouped into piles too just like stacking sheets of paper on a desk. This doesn’t mean you then have to destroy piles of items to retrieve files; piles can be fanned out, flipped through like a book or displayed individually within a container whilst choosing a file. As well as being able to delete items to the trash can, in BumpTop files can be screwed up into balls and thrown about the space. Whether I will use this feature much is to be seen. It may provide a secondary way to store those small notepad files that I may need to keep but not too certain about yet.


The 3D environment of the desktop, shaping it into a room, not only looks great and feels like a tangible space to place items, it also provides a lot more space too with the ability to ‘hang’ stuff on the walls. Items may also be hung on walls outside of the regular camera shot, making them viewable only once the wall is in focus.
This type of interface that takes inspiration from the real environment around us really appeals to me. The designer of BumpTop feels the same; he wanted a desktop which behaved like his real desktop at home. I know where I place items on my desk at both work and home and they are easily located. The ability to be able to pile items into stacks, resize them to give more or less emphasis and hang them on the wall as a picture or in shelves is brilliant. Files are no longer made equal and confined to a regimented grid layout. Personally I think this makes items more personal which will in turn make them easier to find later. If this sounds too loose to you, BumpTop settings can be adjusted so that files are placed in a regimented fashion.

BumpTop also provides the ability to zoom in on areas of the desktop. Let’s say I am working on a certain client for the day. I have grouped a number of documents I require into a pile and written some sticky notes of items I need to consider. I create a new photo frame which pulls in an RSS feed of a tag of my choice from Flickr for inspiration. I move all of these items into the corner of the space and zoom in just on this area. I have all my other items still on the desktop but currently my focus is just on the items that I require for today’s task. Now that is progress. But hang on a minute you yell, sticky notes? Photo frames? What the ‘eck are they? Intrinsic to the BumpTop environment is the ability to create sticky notes which is quite simply a notepad file which displays its text on a scalable, editable icon. Photo frames are very neat. They may be set up to display image files from any folder on your computer or via RSS from a photo sharing website such as Flickr or Picasa. Photo gallery cycles through images every few moments, rescaling to accommodate size and perspective from landscape to portrait and vice-versa.

Here I am discussing all these neat features I like and I haven’t described the most fun one yet, which gives the desktop its name. You can literally throw items across the space, bumping them off one another and the four walls. Larger items are given more weight and can smash smaller files around the place while a small file cannot move an item grossly bigger than itself. Again, all these settings can be adjusted so that files don’t cause too much damage when dragged around the desktop by limiting the ‘bump-ability’.

I have been reading a number of articles of late about next gen interfaces and how some are looking to mimic the world around us more closely. BumpTop goes a long way in achieving this. I have read about some interface designers attempting to bring age into items. For instance, steel boxes becoming tarnished and eventually rusty over time. BumpTop allows you to ‘dog-ear’ corners of files to mark them as to be addressed later. However, adding age to items would’ve been a nice to have.

Having played with BumpTop for a few days now and getting to grips with the features and how it can be used in my day-to-day workflow I really feel it is a worthwhile asset. At only $30 it is not to be sniffed at either. I am sure the functionality on a touch screen with gestural interface technology to arrange the desktop is awesome, but even with a traditional point-and-click mouse it’s a lot of fun and will assist me in keeping organised.

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Tags: 3d, bumptop, desktop, file management, gestural interface, Interface, TED, touch screen

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 6:48 pm and is filed under Interface. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.