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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.'"
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.
The metaphors we're using now work pretty well, and UI changes in the future will probably consist more of refinements of these rather than totally new things, at least until and unless there is a major advance in display technology.
As an example of a well-engineered UI that can make otherwise extremely tedious tasks manageable: Google's Picasa photo manager. It manages to deal with huge amounts of data (3700x2600 jpg's or whatever 10MP comes out to, and 24MB RAW files), run quickly, and show you relevant stuff.
The 3D rotating super+tab screen for task switching in Compiz is another example of using extra computing power to show something useful.
Opera's introduction of mouse gestures is another good idea.
I would have strongly disagreed with your sentiment a short time ago but have changed my mind recently. The things in the article looked like fun but will have a hard time being accepted.
The thing that changed my mind is that I had to install a machine with Vista on it, and it was my first experience with the new OS. The machine is a new dual core Intel with 1Gb of memory. It should be a screamer but is essentially the same as the 5 year old XP machine it replaced. The secretary who has to use the machine did not like it at all and wanted XP installed. To my shock the reason was not about any of the things that I thought were "important" but really just amounted to "its different."
I used to have high hopes for a world with linux desktops but that has been dashed. Too many people prefer the old and comfortable to the new and cool. Apple and MS have the right idea. Get'm while they are young, although the Wii does offer some glimmer of hope.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Those futuristic FX barely have to do with what the final user get as 'experience'. The real experience is about the feelings of the user.
Unfortunately, the most common feelings provoked by today's interfaces are anger and frustration. That's because the interface is littered with rough/unpolished edges, and because software is designed as a bag full of (unrelated) features - instead of as a mean to achieve an end - the process to actually use a feature is rarely taken into the design, not to say tested with users to test it and debug it with the user using it.
A really good development in user experience would be a way to force programmers to follow
this kind of advice.
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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.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
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.
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For instance, I can sit down on my computer, grab dozens of scientific articles in a few minutes, write a summary of them, and have it typeset to publication-quality with a few clicks. I can then launch a professional-quality graphics art program to make a few figures. I then put it all together and send it to someone (who gets it within seconds).
The same operation would previously have taken much more time and money, not to mention specialist talent. (E.g. numerous trips to library, typing and re-typing a manuscript, hiring a graphic artist to make a figure, and mailing the finished product would have taken weeks of time, hundreds of dollars, etc.) And I haven't even mentioned things that are inherently compute-bound (e.g. how long would it take to run a complicated simulation today vs. ten years ago?).
In short, these technologies have enabled the individual to do things that previously only specialists could do, and have allowed everyone to complete their work faster than before. It's easy to dismiss this since the promised "additional free time" from increased productivity never materializes: instead we merely increase our standards of quantity and quality. Many people don't even see this as progress (e.g. many people would prefer handing off tasks like typing and typesetting to others, whereas nowadays the norm is for everyone to do this themselves).
Nevertheless, the net amount of "stuff" that a person produces (documents, designs, computations, admin tasks completed, etc.) has indeed increased in breadth, quantity and quality, due to the use of computers, networks, and our modern clever user-interfaces.
I, for one, am much more productive using a computer than I would be otherwise. And if anyone thinks that their computer isn't making them more productive, then I challenge them to try to complete daily tasks without it, and see how long/arduous things actually are without.
They link to a review of it, so here is my own. We accept for the moment that it will ONLY work with MS software and MS approved hardware.
I put my MS approved camera on the surface, up pops a enormous windows telling me I got to agree to a eula (exactly what happens when you access MS media player for the first time), it then finally allows me to download the photo's. I then try to put them on my Zune 2.0, OOPS cannot do that, the camera is digital and zune only accepts analog (Zune 2.0 doesn't allow the uploading of movies captured with a digitial tv tuner, only analog tuners)
Starting to get the picture? ALl these things sound nice when you just see the pre-scripted demo, but when it comes to real life, well, it all just breaks down. Especially when it comes to Microsoft.
Same thing with multi-touch screens, very nice, but how much software will be written to make use of it when so few people will have such a screen? I remember that System Shock ages ago had support for 3D helmets, it was a hot topic back then and one that never happened. SS was one of the few games to support such systems, the others wisely did not bother since nobody had such helmets and because few games supported them, what was the point in getting one.
I can make a game around the logitech G15 keyboard that makes the device indispensible to play, but I would be really hurting my changes of selling the game.
All these devices are intresting enough, but destined to remain obscure simply because people won't be buying them unless their is a killer application for it, and nobody will build such an application until there is a larger installed base.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
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.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons