Microsoft: Productivity Future Vision

2.5M views · 11 years ago · other · dated

Microsoft's 2015 Productivity Future Vision, a concept film showing how people might work and live with future interfaces. It imagines interactive surfaces, mixed reality and context-aware computing across devices.

HN people mention it as a source of interesting future-UI ideas, and also as the type of concept video that sets expectations real products later fail to meet.

“If you haven’t seen them, look at the Microsoft Future Vision concepts for some quite interesting ideas”

5 comments from Hacker News

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@thor-rodrigues2025 · in “Microsoft: Productivity Future Vision (2015) [video]”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
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@neilalexander2020 · in “Fantasy UI”
If you haven’t seen them, look at the Microsoft Future Vision concepts for some quite interesting ideas: ▶ this video link To me, what makes these fantasy UIs compelling is that they are usually extremely context-aware and content-aware. We haven’t quite worked out how to make real world computers work that way yet. We’re still very much tied to paradigms that are ultimately easier for the computer (apps, windows, menus, files) as opposed to things that are natural to humans. If I have one hope for ML, it’s that hopefully it will bring some context-awareness to computing so that the content becomes the user interface.
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@epicalex2015 · in “Microsoft's Productivity future vision”
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@spookyuser2017 · in “Xperia Touch makes any surface interactive”
I have no idea how well this works in real life. But if the interactive surface is even close to what the video shows then isn't a big portion of the microsoft future concept video [1] fulfilled? [1] ▶ this video
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@bredren2021 · in “Facebook Renames to Meta”
Couple quick things: Zuck's speaking has improved an incredible amount. So, props there. Zuck's said a few variations of "building blocks are there" or "it is coming together" but also, "Even though it is still a long way off..." This projection / demo video of the metaverse seems like a distraction to me. If FB doesn't have this to deliver, it is a lot like the old microsoft product concept videos. [1] What is the intent? To see Zuck as a visionary? Does his speaking deeply on this subject attempt to position him / Meta as an authority? Unless Facebook / Meta is setting expectations way lower than where they're about to deliver, I don't see how this will be viewed as anything other than a temporary salve to fill the vacuum sucking oxygen out of Facebook. [1] ▶ this video
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