Specialized User Interfaces

Here's an interesting podcast of Brian Ferren's speech at Web 2.0.

He makes quite a compelling argument for specialized user interfaces to empower users instead of creating standard GUIs using a keyboard, mouse & monitor for computing tasks.

Although his thoughts are probably not applicable for us working in standard Web/PC-UI Environment, they resonate with the end of consistency in GUIs. Maybe those of us doing traditional desktop apps should think "out-of-the-box" when creating a GUI.

Sometimes standard Windows / MacOS controls don't cut it.