The User Experiences Of The Future

Patrick Griffin writes "The way that we interact with technology is almost as important as what that technology does. Productivity has been improved greatly over the years as we've adapted ourselves and our tools to technological tasks. Just the same, the UI experience of most hardware and software often leaves novice users out in the cold. The site 'Smashing Magazine' has put together a presentation of 'some of the outstanding recent developments in the field of user experience design. Most techniques seem very futuristic, and are extremely impressive. Keep in mind: they might become ubiquitous over the next years.'"

Comments

Not sure 3D is always the best

[PIPBoy3000]

They really seem to be pushing 3D interfaces in the article. While that's neat and all, I suspect there's a reason not every book is a pop-up book. Flat, 2D representations of data are typically the most efficient for our brain and eyeballs. For entertainment and representing 3D data, it can make sense. I just don't plan on coding in 3D any time soon.

Re:Not sure 3D is always the best

[Selfbain]

The Star Trek version of a teleporter is essentially a suicide booth. It rips you apart and then makes a copy on the other end. Do not want.

Re:Not sure 3D is always the best

[jythie]

I think part of the problem in these various usability debates is that a good UI for learning and bringing in newbies is not the most effective solution once one has greater needs.

This 'one size fits all' mentality is the issue. We need interfaces that scale from basic to advanced so the basic users doing get slammed with all the advanced stuff and advanced users don't find themselves without the tools they need to actually do their work.

Re:The greatest UI was the fax machine

[khendron]

You're joking right? A fax machine's UI sucks. In my experience very few people, when faced with sending a fax for the first time, have managed to do so successfully. They always need help.

When you approach a fax machine, there is no obvious starting action to take. Do you dial first, or scan the pages first? Do you scan the pages one at a time, or can you put them down all at once? When you dial the number, there is no feedback that anything is happening. No sound of dialing, no sound of handshake. Just some cryptic messages like TX that mean absolutely nothing to a novice. Eventually the machine will spit out a page that, you hope, says somewhere on it STATUS: SUCCESS. If you do run into difficulty, you have to find the dead-tree manual to help you, because the messages on the little LCD display don't help much.

A fax machine's UI is about as user friendly as a linux shell without man pages.

User experience

[Alioth]

AAArrrgh. User experience.

I don't want a user experience. If I'm having a "user experience", then the application or operating system is getting in my way. I want the OS or app to melt into the background so I hardly think that I'm using it.

The best UI is the one you can't see

[petes_PoV]

All these "futuristic" interfaces fall foul of the "flying car" effect. In the past people expected that by now (well, by about 1980) we'd all have given up out automobiles for flying cars. These UIs are the computing equivalent - they take our current limited experiences and extrapolate them.

In practice anything that involves waving your arms around, a la Minority report will be the fastest way to get tired arms ever invented. So that's the Reactible, Multi-touch and Microsoft surface out of the running. Imaging doing that for an 8 hour shift in your datacentre. Completely impractical, but like flying cars, looks great to the uninformed.

Let's face it, typing is quicker than mousing - you've got 110 keys at your disposal instead of just 2 (or up to 5 - wow wee!!!) and the limitation is the number you can press is limited by the numberof fingers you can manipulate at once - not the numebr of things you can press. Just try writing a letter by mouse clicks. Typing is even quicker than speaking - especially when you have to go back and change the phonetically (sorry fonetically) spelled words that come out.

Personally, all I want from a UI is one that doesn't steal focus from my window to pop-up a "Shall I delete all your files Y / n" just when I think I'm, going to hit in a text window. It should keep the clutter off my screen and just show me the stuff I want. Aeroglass is nowhere near this (and probably going in the wrong direction anyway - far too complicated). Let's just keep it as simple as possible, but no simpler.