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The Future & History of the User Interface

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the pointing-at-point-and-click dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Mac Observer is taking a look at UI development with lots of video links to some of the latest developments in user interfaces. It also has links to some of the most interesting historical footage of UI developments, here's one of the 1968 NLS demo. From the article: 'Sadly, a great many people in the computer field have a pathetic sense (or rather ignorance) of history. They are pompous and narcissistic enough to ignore the great contributions of past geniuses... It might be time to add a mandatory "History of Computers" class to the computer science curriculum so as to give new practitioners this much needed sense of history.'"

20 of 249 comments (clear)

  1. I'm outraged! by Cr0w+T.+Trollbot · · Score: 5, Funny
    Where are the glorious UI innovation like Clippy and Microsoft Bob?

    Crow T. Trollbot

    1. Re:I'm outraged! by Tackhead · · Score: 4, Interesting
      > Where are the glorious UI innovation like Clippy and Microsoft Bob?

      On the shitcan of history, like the unreadable choice of default font on Slashdot, the Star Wars Galaxies NGE, the changes to Yahoo's stock message boards, and two recent changes to Google Maps, one of which has made broke printing impossible (users are now reduced to taking goddamn screen captures and printing those!), and and another one that auto zooms and recenters, instead of merely re-centering the map, on double-click, making navigation a time-consuming process of setting a desired zoom level, clicking to recenter, slowly loading a bunch of tiles you don't need, then unzooming back out, and loading yet another set of tiles.

      In each of these cases, user feedback was nearly universally negative, and yet the "improvements" remain in place.

      If this is UI innovation for Web 2.0, give me Web 1.0 back.

  2. Re:In other news... by celardore · · Score: 3, Funny

    Graphical User Interfaces are intuitive because you can remember the location of things.

    That's easy. It's at c:/>Files\Home\Photos\1997\Family\Snaps\*.jpg

    duh.

  3. Multi-touch by identity0 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The multi-touch interface demo on Youtube was interesting, I saw it a while ago.

    The thing that makes it different is how casual the interaction is compared to file & image programs today. You see the guy just touch the screen and rotate, zoom, and move images around and organize it, instead of opening up dialog boxes, secondary windows, or menus to access the functionality. It's very basic stuff, but you see how powerful it is, kind of like how Google Maps is compared to the old static kind of online maps.

    It's like today's image programs are concerned with precicely doing something like zoom to exact levels(%100/%50/%33/etc), but this programs let you do it to "whatever zoom feels right", without worrying you with the details.

    Hey speaking of which, I wish cameraphones had a much more fluid interface for picture organization, so I can add keywords, associate it with people on my contacts, etc... but what do they care, as long as they make money off the ringtones :(

    1. Re:Multi-touch by Eideewt · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Agreement here too.

      My biggest gripe with today's computer interfaces is that attempting to funnel everything you might want to do through a mouse plus (if you're lucky) a keyboard forces you (as an interface designer) to make a difficult decision: either waste huge amounts of screen real-estate on functions you need to include, or hide them away.

      What we need are interface devices that aren't so bandwidth limited. When we want to make the computer perform an action, all we are generally able to do is locate it on the screen and say "Do." On systems with multi-button mice the situation is somewhat better. Most Firefox users are familiar with "left click to follow a link, middle click to open it in another tab, and right click to get an [ick] context menu" idiom. Scroll wheels are another instance of a bandwidth-increasing addition to the system. Rather than clicking an arrow to scroll, we are now able to spin a wheel while pointing in the general area of the thing we wedant to scroll.

      Some systems put the physical controls available to even better use. The Sam text editor, its successor Acme, and basically all of the Plan 9 operating utilize the mouse buttons to perform distinct and consistent actions. In Plan 9, button 1 selects, and the other two buttons, when used in conjunction with it, perform other useful actions. The exciting feature of this setup is that it moves the selection of possible actions out of the computer, where navigation is inefficient, and puts it literally under your fingertips. Rather than selecting an object on the screen then selecting an action, or vice versa, one can simply point at it and say "do this." The ability to convey specific actions in one fell swoop is what makes command line junkies (myself included) swing the way they do. What could be more exciting than marrying that power with a GUIs flexible expression?

      An even more extreme example is the five button keyboard (for the left hand) + three button mouse featured in the Doug Engelbart video linked from the summary. I'm not sure how his system used them, but this setup allows for eight functions using the most obvious mapping, many more than modern interfaces. Not only that, but with chording, it's possible to increase the number of possible actions to a dizzying 255, which is probably way too many to actually make use of*: Engelbart's system uses typed commands as well as clicks rather than attempting to assign a meaning to each combination of button presses. One good way to cope with the number of possibilities is to assign a general funtion to each button, and to combine those functions to perform actions. For example, if the left mouse button selects text, the middle button pastes it, and the right mouse button cuts it, one can copy by selecting with LMB, then pressing RMB, MMB in succession. Other button actions might be "system" to trigger global system functions, "window" to do window management and "inspect" to look more closely at an item. What might happen when you press these together? Exposé, anyone? But without reaching for the keyboard.

      Anyone interested in user interfaces should take a look at the Sketchpad computer program for starters, which was simply amazing, and at "Alan Kay: Graphical User Interfaces" on Google Video. GUIs have a rich history that is not evident in modern interfaces.

      * This is a good thing! Even when a the system allocates a set of global button presses and applications implement their set of commands, there will still by plenty left over for the rest of us to allocate as we see fit. This is the one point where I disagree with Bunions: I love that multimedia keyboards aren't standardized, because it means that programs don't depend on the buttons they provide, which in turn gives me 32 keys (on the keyboard I have) that I can bind to any action I want, without losing any functionality.

    2. Re:Multi-touch by Eideewt · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I think you're selling multi-touch displays short. While I agree that a device doesn't have to do everything, it's clear from the number of people who are dissatisfied with human-computer interfaces that the things they do could be done better. You're also underestimating the amount of mousing that people do. Touchscreens are no replacement for the keyboard, but they are a good replacement for the mouse (except maybe in FPS games, a special case).

      Computers have a few things they do well: accept textual input, display data on big screens, and multi-task. From those it follows that anything graphical or textual is a good fit, and that while "one device to do everything" is a bad idea, one device that does many things that it happens to be good at is a great idea. For example, it's extremely common that a person wants to access the web while working on a project. It's better to have one device that can help you gracefully juggle everything you're trying to do than to have a typewriter, a web browser, a CD player, your clock, a "download machine" and a telegraph key (for IMing), each with its own chassis, competing for desk space. Up to a point, combining functions makes sense.

      Computers also do one thing very badly: they don't accept input from anything other than a keyboard very well. Specialized fields do have devices that work well: graphics tablets for graphics artists and MIDI keyboards for composers, for example. The driving force behind multi-touch displays is that the "interface for the rest of us", the mouse, is a difficult and inefficient thing to use. We all have ten built-in pointing devices which we can use with aplomb -- some people even manage to use their toes as a few more -- and multi-touch displays are a way to make use of those. Much as I dislike the desktop metaphor, I must invoke it here: using a mouse to interact with a computer is akin to using a single stick to push your papers around on your desk. It's just not the best way to go about it.

      I very much doubt that it would be stressful to use a multi touch display for a long time. In fact, I suspect that it would be much less stressful than making the constrained motions required by a mouse. Joints are *made* to move. It might still be a little exhausting at first.

      I agree that UIs are best when they are simple... but simple is in the eye of the beholder. To me, a UI that allows me to use my skills in a direct way is a simple one. Using my fingers to move on-screen objects = simple to me. A complex UI is one that requires me to perform actions in ways that take more effort than the direct way. The direct way is the way I would do it if I were manipulating physical objects. For example, menus (especially nested ones) and window managers that don't (i.e. I have to drag and position windows myself, when the window *manager* should do it) are complex to me. Above all, attempting to convey a huge variety of instructions by pushing a box around and clicking buttons on it is complex, because it adds another layer I have to work through. If I ever my my GUI fairy godmother, I'm asking her for a laptop with a touch screen. Maybe a multi-touch screen if she looks generous.

  4. Creaky and old fashioned? How about useful. by posterlogo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    FTA: The current state-of-the-art User Interface (UI) we've been enjoying has remained largely stagnant since the 1980s. The greatest innovation that has been recently released is based on video card layering/buffering techniques like Apple's Expose. But, there is a large change coming. Rev 2 of the UI will be based on multiple gestures and more directly involve human interaction. Apple is clearly working in the area as some of the company's patent filings demonstrate. Nevertheless, these videos might make Mac (and Windows) users experience a huge case of UI envy, as a lot of UI development (in XGL in particular) makes the current Mac UI seem creaky and old fashioned.

    The guy seems to think that the stagnation of the UI is an entirely bad thing. It seems to me that when something works well, people like to stick to it. I really don't think the majority of people need multiple desktops floating around let alone a brain interface. The only widely practical new UI technology I saw was multi-touch interactive displays (or touch screens in general, though they have been around for a long time and are still not very popular). As far as his comment that the new-fangled UIs make the Mac seem creaky and old, well, that's his opinion I guess. Some would just say the Mac UI is useful as it is. Even some of the new features in Leopard seem unnecessary to me. It's never bad to innovate, just don't automatically assume every new cool thing is practical or useful for most people.

  5. Assuming that I won the lottery tomorrow... by MarcoAtWork · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ... and I could stop working and go back to university to get another degree full time and end up into research, where would the state of the art of the UI/human-computer-interaction field be? which degree would one want to pursue? where?

    I've always been fascinated by HCI but have yet to be able to pursue this in a work-related setting (where I tend to write backend code, basically as far away from users as you could possibly get).

    --
    -- the cake is a lie
  6. Overlapping windows by Peaker · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Heh, the issue of User Interfaces always makes me laugh at the incompetence of seemingly the entire world when it comes to User Interfaces (or the whole computing world in general).

    Some obvious trivial faults:
    1. The whole overlapping window model is bankrupt. You want to minimize the amount of information, especially redundant information, that the user has to input, and output as much information in an accessible way. The overlapping window model does the opposite: it requires that you tile your windows manually (or through tedious, inaccessible menus) rather than specifying which windows you want to see. If you don't do that (and due to the required effort, most don't) then you don't see all of the information you want even though most of the screen is wasted space!.
      For reference, just look at your screen now, and watch how much of it is covered by empty "gray areas". When you open a new window, does it hide gray areas, or real information?
      This is even more absurd when there are just a couple of windows, hiding each other, when the entire screen is free space! The computer expects YOU to work for HIM and move these windows from hiding each other.
      This phonemenon is also felt in list boxes, where you are expected to adjust the column widths manually to not be too short/too long, even when there is an optimal adjustment readily available. You again have to work for the computer, and ask for a ctrl+plus to set it up. Most people don't even know about ctrl+plus in column-listboxes.
      Some programs make it even worse, and don't let you resize their windows when the entire screen is free, and you have to scroll through their data in a little window.
    2. Internationalization and shortcut keys.
      What's so fascinating about this example - is how common it is across platforms, programs, operating systems.
      The feature is called "shortcut keys" and yet everyone is implementing it as "shortcut symbols".
      This is terrible - when you switch between languages, all shortcut keys break!
    3. Multitude of widgets, with overlapping functionalities. This is just silly and confusing to beginners. We need less widgets, not more.
    4. "Jumpyness". Today's GUI's all "jump". What I mean by that is that they don't smoothly switch from one state to the next, but rather do that with a single screen refresh. The human mind doesn't read that very well. For example, scrolling down "jumps" down a pageful instead of scrolling down a pageful in a smooth motion.
      The fact that fixing this would require modifications of all existing GUI programs is a certificate of poor architecture of GUI software.


    There are many more trivial issues to fix. Until they fix these, I find it very funny to talk about future directions for the User Interface. We haven't even gotten the basics right yet!
    1. Re:Overlapping windows by CaptainCarrot · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I disagree.

      1. Overlapping windows are used to make more information available to the user than can be displayed on the available screen real estate. The RL metaphor is a collection of papers on a desk. You can't see every paper all at once, but you bring to the top of the pile those which you need. You do this for your own benefit, based on the needs of the moment, not for that of the desk -- or the computer. The whole point is that the space isn't tiled. I don't like working that way personally, and I suspect the reason we've moved away from that model is because most people don't. Remember the early Windows versions?

        You asked how much of the screen was empty space and therefore wasted? Very little of it, most likely. Very little of mine is as I type. Space with no content in it is not necessarily wasted. In fact, it most likely isn't. Space is crucial to how our brains orgainize what we see. If every square inch of space on the screen was being used, we'd see it as a jumbled mess. The best and most eye-pleasing data presentation use of designs very carefully balance empty space against that occupied by content. Take, for example, your original post against my reply. See how I create spaces between my paragraphs with properly structured P tags? See how much more readable that is?

        I agree that some programs are badly designed and make poor use of the model. That doesn't mean the model itself is broken.

        Yes, it would be nice for those very particular about their screen arrangements if they could save state between sessions and recover it immediately when they start back up again. This is an implementation issue 00 remembering, of course, that most people prefer not to tile.

      2. Yes they're shortcut symbols really, but people have a hard time remembering arbitrary symbols. That's why we employ mnemonics, which naturally relate to the language of the interface. For example, it's easy to remember the shortcut to open a file in most word processors (ctrl-O) because "O" is the first letter in the word "open". It's not reasonable to expect such mnemonics, input through an alphanumeric keyboard, to work any other way -- unless you can think of a better one where alphanumeric input is both easy to remember and language-independent. Good luck.
      3. This is not an inherent fault in the model, but is a failure across an industry to standardize. In my own GUI design work in Motif, this is why I use the default behavior of the default widget set as much as possible. The users most often know exactly what to expect then.
      4. I remember when some word processors and the like included a "smooth scrolling" option. No one used it. It turned out that most people wanted the screen to scroll quickly instead.

      --
      And the brethren went away edified.
  7. The Future is easy to predict here. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In the long term, we'll be communicating with computers the same way we communicate with our pets, kids, and coworkers - with a combination of body language, voice, gestures, etc.

    In the short term, we'll see Longhorn slowly and sloppily copy whatever Apple's doing; and we'll see KDE and Gnome both copying the bad parts of what the Gnome and KDE are doing respectively; and we'll see all real computer users using emacs/vi/pine/xterm/screen like they always did.

  8. Nobody's paying attention by quokkapox · · Score: 4, Insightful

    At least not to common consumer devices. I cannot even count the number of remote controls, microwaves, cellphones, dishwashers, ATMs, and other devices which are seem to be designed completely without thought for the human who will need to use them.

    Remote controls - ever heard of making the buttons distinguishable by FEEL, so I don't have to look down to tell whether I'm going to change the volume or accidentally change the channel or stop recording?

    Microwaves - make the buttons we use all the time bigger and obvious. I can't use my microwave oven in near dark because the stupid thing's start button is indistinguishable from the power level button. That's just dumb. I don't need two different buttons that say "Fresh vegetable" and "Frozen vegetable" which I never use; and I have to babysit the popcorn anyway, so I don't need a "popcorn" button hardcoded for some random time limit. A microwave should have a keypad for entering time and bigger buttons labeled +1minute, +10seconds, ON, and OFF. That's all 99% of people use anyway.

    The people who design interfaces should be made to use them for long enough so that they work out at least the most obvious design flaws.

    I keep putting off buying a new cellphone because I know I will have to learn a new interface even to set the freaking alarm clock and it will probably take six menu choices to do it.

    --
    it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
    1. Re:Nobody's paying attention by Lugae · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I have two more:

      1. The gas pump that once you pick up the pump the prices disappear asking you to "Select Product."

      2. The ATM that the button that you used to press "Withdrawl" on the next screen would withdraw $200. Shouldn't that go to the smallest amount or a "Go Back" button?

    2. Re:Nobody's paying attention by evilviper · · Score: 3, Insightful
      I can't use my microwave oven in near dark because the stupid thing's start button is indistinguishable from the power level button.

      Better question: WHY THE HELL ARE MICROWAVES DIGITAL? What part of "close the door and turn the dial" was so hard for people to understand, and how did typing in digits help? Microwaves aren't phones.

      Was it the extra precision? People need to be sure they are microwaving their sandwich for exactly 2 minutes and 45 seconds, and ABSOLUTELY NOT 2 minutes and 46 seconds?

      Are there a lot of people out there with only one finger, who find it faster and easier to type in 1-0-0-0-Start rather than turning the dial a quarter turn to "10m"?

      What in the world makes people believe replacing analog with digital is the answer to absolutely everything?
      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  9. Intuitiveness by FlyByPC · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Amazing how naturally he uses the mouse -- back in 1968!

    --
    Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
  10. self study as elective was denied by cadience · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I graduated in 2003 with a BS in Computer Engineering and a BS in Software Engineering.

    During my studies I proposed multiple times to do an independent study of the history of the computer field to count for 3 credits of my general electives. I was denied every time, even with support from the head the Engineering department. The liberal arts department continually stated that the purpose of the electives is to gain breath in knowledge. I finally took a (very interesting) class on Greek mythology.

    I agree with the premise of increasing knowledge, but not the implementation. The college should encourage independent research when a student can blend his primary interests to meet a "credit based requirement".

    What are your thoughts?

    Understanding history of your profession should be as important as understanding your culture and your history. Your profession will become a part of who you are as well! Without context, you're clueless.

  11. MUD and MMRPG players know ... by cpu_fusion · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That the biggest UI change yet-to-come has to do with moving from a single-user desktop metaphor to a collaborative virtual space that leverages a lifetime of perception of the real world. When computers evolve into a more transparent role in our life, layering this digital world on our physical world will be next. It's coming sooner than we think, will we survive that long though?

  12. Whatever the next UI is, it won't be "intuitive" by Dr.+Zowie · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Several years ago I had the delightful privilege of talking about interface design with Jef Raskin (who designed many aspects of the Macintosh UI).

    He pointed out that "the only intuitive user interface is a nipple."

    Several days ago my wife and I had a new son, so of course I watched them learn (together) how to breastfeed. It was not obvious to either one of them how to make it work -- they had to explore and figure it out together.

    It appears that Jef was wrong: even nipples are not an intuitive user interface.

  13. apply it to a calculator... by 3seas · · Score: 3, Insightful

    take these fancy UIs and use them to control a calculator and then decide if it right for the job.

    "Right for the Job" is the key phrase.

    There are three primary UIs:

    the command line (CLI)

    the Graphical User Interface (GUI)

    and the side door port used to tie functionality together. known by many different names, but in essence an Inter Process Communication Port (IPC)

    Together they are like the primary colors of light or paint, take away one and you greatly limit what the user can do for themselves,

    But if they are standardized with the recognition of abstraction physics (in essence what a computer impliments) then the user would be able to create specifically what they need for the job they do via understanding and applying abstraction physics. The analogy would be mathmatics and the hindu-arabic decimal system in comparison to the more limited roman numeral system.

    There are all sorts of user interfaces that can be created but they all are made up of some combination of the primary three, perhaps lower down on the abstraction ladder but none the less there.

    The reason why this is unavoidable is simple due to the nature of programming.

    Programming is the act of automating some complexity, typically made up of earlier created automations (machine language - 0's and 1's is first level abstraction - all above it is an automation). The purpose of automating some complexity is tocreate an easier to use and reuse interface for that complexity. And we all build upon what those before us have created. Its a human unique characteristic that make its our natural right and duty to apply.

    What the failure of so called computer science is guilty of is distraction by the money carrot, starting with IBM and wartime code cracking paid for by government/tax payers.

    This distraction has avoided genuine computer science, or abstraction physics as it would be far more accurate in description.

    Abstraction physics to the creation and manipulation of abstractions as mathmatics is a creation and manipulation of numbers, as physics and chemistry is a creation and manipulation of elements existing in physical reality.

    With the primary three colors of paint you can paint anything you want, but you cannot call a painting "the painting" any more than you can call a mathmatical result mathmatics. Nor can you call some interface built upon the primary UIs the silver bullet of UI's.

    All this will become much more clear, common and even second nature once we all get past the foolish fraudlent idea that software is patentable.

    A roman numeral accountant, in defending his vested interest in math with roman numerals, promoted that only a fool would think nothing could have value (re: the zero place holder in the hindu arabic decimal system.)

  14. Re:Two mice. by Hell+O'World · · Score: 3, Funny

    Most of that stuff can be done with two mice. Why hasn't anyone implemented that yet?
    Because all innovation in the computer industry comes from the field of pornography.