Okay, I thought this would be something really dumb when I first saw “Microsoft” and “dance-dance email” in the same headline, but it’s actually kind of cool. Users of this email program developed by Microsoft Research can “dance-dance” to quickly sort their email. Sounds like it could even make sorting through a full inbox fun for once.

From an Arstechnia.com article:

The Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) pad on the floor [...] turned out to be the centerpiece of the event. Dr. AJ Brush, PhD, jumped on the pad and showed us how the team had used the off-the-shelf gaming interface to demonstrate a new method of human-computer interaction.

Firing up a custom-built e-mail application, she used her feet on the up and down arrows to scroll through messages, and hit another pad to open and close them for viewing. E-mails could be flagged using the left and right arrows. Deleting was the most fun, as it involved jumping and hitting a specific combo (right arrow and the diagonal between up and left) together. Dr. Brush said that test subjects had gotten quite excited about deleting e-mails and became a bit too carried away in cleaning out their Inbox.

Dr. Stephen Drucker then demonstrated a second possible application for the pad, a smooth-scrolling photo management application in the vein of iPhoto or “Microsoft Codename Max.” The user could quickly run through photos and sort them into different folders using the DDR pad, although Dr. Brush did admit that in testing it was found that one’s right leg could get tired while constantly scrolling to the next photo.

The floor was then opened up to questions. First off the bat was the obvious one: it looks like fun, but when the fun wears off, how practical is such a system? Schofield admitted that there have to be specific, measurable increases in productivity for a new system like this to take off, but that there were some cases where people might welcome a change of pace in the way they interact with their computer. The opportunity to stand up, stretch, and get a small bit of exercise while simultaneously sorting through your Inbox might appeal to busy workers who are hunched over their keyboards all day long. Besides, he concluded, “there is no law that says work can’t be fun.”