Nice experiment!<p>I agree that providing something more tangible than just a number would be beneficial for some operations. But I think it would get annoying quickly. Having difficulty moving a "heavy" file is the opposite of a good user interface. Every manipulation should require as little mental and physical effort as possible. Apart from that, I can't apply force with my mouse — it just clicks.<p>I believe a purely visual approach could work well. For example: every file icon has the same front area (basically the rectangles we have now), but visually extends to the back with some sort of stylized 3D effect, according to file size. So a small text file looks like a thin sheet of paper, a 10MB file might look like it's made of thick cardboard, a 2GB video looks like a box with considerable depth. The scaling should probably be logarithmic, not linear, to work well with human perception.
See "Sonic Finder" for the Macintosh.[1] Heavy folders made bigger thumps when opened, or dragged and dropped. It was not widely used and disappeared. I did try it once. Cool, but not useful.<p>[1] <a href="http://sonify.psych.gatech.edu/~ben/references/gaver_the_sonicfinder_an_interface_that_uses_auditory_icons.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://sonify.psych.gatech.edu/~ben/references/gaver_the_son...</a>
Heavy is relative. If you're working with videos, everything is heavy in terms of file size relative to most files. Yet, a small text file could be just as important as any video.<p>I think this is a fun thought experiment that is fundamentally a bad product idea.
I think this type of concept is worth exploring. Side channel feedback to the operator of a machine is getting less noticeable. Hard drives don't whirr and click like they used to. Cars don't have transmissions that shift.<p>When you pick up a physical object with your hands, you don't assume the heavier the object, the more important it is. Same with file size.<p>But if you pick up your carton of eggs every morning you'll know if you have enough left to make an omelette.<p>If you make a backups it would be nice feedback to feel it weigh about what you expected. When making room on a disk you could juggle a few folders to feel if they'll fit or not.<p>There was some advanced facility (nuclear reactor? particle accelerator?) that laid microphones near the machinery and put various speakers in the ceiling of the control room; helped precisely detect and pinpoint problems immediately.<p>That said I'll prefer just seeing the size of the file or folder in bytes as a number.<p>I'm personally more interested in feeling other system metrics, like network traffic or memory bandwidth.
I've always thought it would be neat if the accelerator pedal on cars had some sort of force feedback that was proportional to the amount of power the engine is putting out. That way the driver would be able to feel how hard they're demanding the car to work, and hopefully they would adjust their driving habits to go slower on steep hills, not hard accelerate out of traffic lights, etc.
The size of a file has nothing to do with its importance. But it's a valuable piece of information when you're shoveling data around.
I agree that it is relative, but disagree with your conclusion. I think the relativity you have in mind is what we normally think of as a setting.
A box of large rocks feels different than a box of pebbles. Maybe this could be simulated.
That was entertaining to try as a demo, but I did not enjoy the UX of it because I don't have a proper sense of how much force I'm using on a touchpad. I have poor dynamic range in the amount of force I exert there.
Awesome. I want to marry this with a concept I had a while ago around a computer keyboard with pressure sensitivity that adjusted the font size in proportion to how hard you struck the keys.<p>I like the idea of being able to enter into BILLY MAYS MODE just by furiously typing.
Well, they already do in that large files take more time to copy which subconsciously discourages moving them.
If it wasn't for Windows 11's already horrible performance I'd love this idea.
You can emulate pressure sensitivity on Android by tracking the change in the radius of the touch point. With a little effort, it can be made to be nearly identical to the iOS system. I'd go into it or link you to some code, but it was like a decade ago that I last did it. I just remember I got it to work and it was fun.
Interesting concept, but it feels difficult to use. I do think it's a cool demo!<p>One conceptual issue I noticed with using it is that force touch requires pressure in the opposite direction of how I would understand weight and mass. It feels more like... I'm trying to think of a physical example, trying to force down something with buoyancy. I also expected the weight to affect how fast I needed to drag my finger, but once I exerted enough downward pressure, both heavy and light objects moved the same.
extremely useful in gaming even!
Try it yourself at <a href="https://pressureinteraction.netlify.app" rel="nofollow">https://pressureinteraction.netlify.app</a>