IMAGE: VIKTOR KOEN

You launched your Web browser this morning and typed "driver circuit" into a search engine. You're looking for design tips for integrating a light-emitting diode onto a circuit board. Instead of the typical text list of sites, a hodgepodge of references to stepper motors, audio loudspeakers, and the Formula One racing season (those "drivers" do follow "circuits"), your screen fills with colored balls, nested like groups of solar systems within solar systems, each labeled with a general term. You ignore the balls labeled "pro racing," "solenoid drivers," and "power supplies" and click on the circle labeled "LED drivers," which brings you to a group of squares that are Web links to sites with information about LED driver circuits. You found what you were looking for in seconds.

In May, San Francisco's Groxis Inc. rolled out this new type of user interface as part of a Java plug-in for Internet browsers. As a new way of looking at information, it may catch on. Or another, equally unconventional means of interacting with a computer might take over instead. It may look like strands of DNA, or it might look like bubbles, paper tossed on a desk, or a timeline. It may float in a three-dimensional dome. Or it might look like something we can't even imagine today.

Sources for interface metaphors abound. In the past, we leaned heavily on the world of the office and its folders and desktops, because we thought we were building interfaces mainly for office workers. But today, information work and information workers are everywhere. The FedEx carrier is an information worker, collecting data on packages picked up and delivered and submitting it to FedEx's giant, very accessible, online database. Retail store clerks may be information workers when they enter new inventory into the store's database as they stock the shelves. Nurses are information workers when they feed notes previously scrawled on illegible or inaccessible charts directly to digital systems, making the data available to the patient as well as the doctors anywhere, anytime.

This means new metaphors. Many will come from life sciences. Others may come from the health care or other industries, as these become information-dense environments. An interface for a next-generation technology might come from the gaming world, where fast visualization metaphors abound. What is sure is that someday our great-grandchildren will look back and laugh at the unsophisticated ways we accessed and navigated data.

But change has indeed begun, as demonstrated by a recent flurry of product introductions and research announcements.

The interface for documents, folders, and menus that is familiar to computer users today is nearly 30 years old. Invented at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, popularized by Apple Computer, and then embraced by Microsoft, it was a huge breakthrough compared with the command-driven interface that preceded it [see photo, "Star Power"]. It has served the computer world well; its death has long been predicted, but has yet to occur.

However, its desktop look dates back to a time when the typical personal computer had less computing power than today's cellphone, and it was created before the advent of Web pages, digital cameras, and Apple iPods. Indeed, it turned out to be versatile enough to handle these disparate forms of information, but it was by no means the most efficient way of doing so. For today, instead of a few dozen megabytes of stored data, users have tens of gigabytes or more, and access to unimaginably large data troves over the Internet. A typical user has one set of folders for text documents, another for organizing e-mail, and separate photo-sorting software for images—but what the user really needs is an easy way to connect and navigate the disparate data relating to a project or topic. Today, companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year training users on new applications and bailing out others who've gotten lost in the intricacy of their systems. Better interfaces could solve these problems or at least lessen their impact—in cost, frustration, and lost productivity—on businesses and users.