Usability in the Movies -- Top 10 Bloopers

Ant writes "A UseIt.com article talks about user interfaces (UIs) in film that are more exciting than they are realistic, and heroes have far too easy a time using foreign systems. The way Hollywood depicts usability could fill many a blooper reel. Here are 10 of the most egregious mistakes made by moviemakers. From the article: '3. The 3D UI - In Minority Report, the characters operate a complex information space by gesturing wildly in the space in front of their screens. As Tog found when filming Starfire, it's very tiring to keep your arms in the air while using a computer. Gestures do have their place, but not as the primary user interface for office systems.'"

Comments

How it should work

[jours]

What, am I the only one reading this crap on Christmas Eve?

Think about how tedious a computer scene would be if the user had to navigate Windows, KDE, or even Mac OS X. While the herione was trying to find her husband's company's secret documents she'd log in ... click on My Computer ... then My Network Places ... then log in again ... then private -> secret -> projects -> 2006 -> world domination ... and then wait for Office to load.

The way it works in the movies is the way it should work. Log in, type "find Kyoto meeting minutes", a bunch of matrix-ish characters scroll across the screen, and there it is.

Re:How it should work

[edwardpickman]

It could be a nice story point that while they are desperately trying to save the world their XP computer starts constantly warning them that they need to update their system. It's not really a joke because I used to have my XP machine plugged into the internet. Well about a month ago I was in the middle of an important render when it decided it didn't want to wait any longer to install an update. It kept prompting me that it was about to reboot. I spent two hours every five minutes telling it not to reboot until the render finished. I immediately yanked the internet connection and haven't updated it since. I can see a hero trying to enter the code to stop a nuclear attack when the windows machine tells him it's going to reboot to update his system.

Re:Sound effects?

[ScrewMaster]

On the other hand, most of the people watching those experts in TV and film aren't experts and haven't the slightest idea how a real expert would behave. The idea in a movie is to make the action appear realistic to the majority of the audience. Whether it is actually realistic is secondary. Yes, that will alienate some small percentage of the said audience who have the experience to perceive the error, but from a cinematic perspective that's a small price to pay. Hey, this is Slashdot and most of us are computer-literate far beyond the norm, but you can bet your boots that there are many people from other disciplines that just want to rip their eyes out when they watch scenes that would just make us think, "Whoa ... cool."

By way of example, in the original pilot of Star Trek (original series) the test audience felt the opening sequence felt unnatural, because when the Enterprise was zooming into view there was no sound. That was as it should have been, this being a starship traveling through vacuum parsecs from anything resembling an atmosphere. However, as soon as Roddenbery's people added the swoosh! sound effect, everybody was happy. I've seen both sequences and I must admit I prefer it with the sound, even though I know better.

Too hard to keep your hands in the air?

[MarcoAtWork]

My teachers (from grade school to college) had no problems gesturing and writing on whiteboards all day, also something tells me that painters, form carpenters, etc. etc. (especially in days gone by, without power nailers and spray guns) can keep their hands up in the air all day long no problem.

Old Hardware issues.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I remember watching "The Lone Gunman" one day (thank God that show didn't make it!) and they needed more processing power to crack a password to take over a hijacked plane. "We could do this if had one of those new Octium 4's!" Well, they get one, right before the plane hits the building, they pull out their existing processor, I assume and Octium 3, and drop in the new Octium 4, without so much as powering the machine off... and BAM! They had their password and saved the plane. Oh, and no processors had any type of thermal anything!"

Nothing odd. On mainframes you can pull complete assembies off, and add without powering down. Some of the old timers here can tell you of hardware that could take almost anything and survive. It's just consumer equipment that has lowered everyone's expectations.

Re:Ridiculous...

[Hooya]

> ... nobody uses the can ...

but then, in Pulp Fiction, whenever something serious is going down, John Travolta is in the can.

i) Robbery at the diner.
ii) Mia ODing
iii) Bruce Willis returning to his apartment to fetch his daddys watch - consequently ends up shooting Travolta while he is *in the can*.

So, just wanted to point out that there is at least one movie where 'can usage' is central to the story.

Grandfather

[Tony]

Her grandfather ran the place. If I were a rich grandfather, and my granddaughter loved computers, I would get her the same computers I used at my super-duper dino ranch. Duh. So she would've known Unix, and she would've known the interface they used at the installation.

All this griping because the kid knew Unix was stupid. It makes sense in the context of the movie, which is all that matters. I mean, filling in dino DNA with frog DNA was ridiculous, but it worked within the confines of the movie.

At twelve, I was programming assembly language on the Apple ][ for high-speed 3D wireframe graphics (like Bill Budge's cool toolkit, only sucky). It's not surprising a bright kid wouldn't know how to fly through a 3D interface on which she already had experience thanks to her understanding and very rich grandfather.