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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.'"

10 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. 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 :(

  3. 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.

  4. 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.
  5. 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.

  6. 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
  7. 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.

  8. 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.