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For GUIs, Just the Right Degree of Realism

Posted by timothy on from the insightful-line-drawing dept.

mr crypto writes "User interfaces make copious use of pictures and symbols, but how abstract should images be? Lukas Mathis has an interesting blog entry on where to draw the line."

20 of 256 comments (clear)

  1. Confusing icon practices by suso · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Just yesterday, I was commenting on twitter about how the new icon sets for youtube videos are rather confusing. It took a bit of staring to figure out what these icons do. Nobody was able to guess the right answer. C_64 had the funniest answer though by saying "You can only go 8 bits forward or 8 bits to the left ?"

    1. Re:Confusing icon practices by Z00L00K · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But regardless of age there are good and bad icons. Newer icons aren't better, and often they seem to be even more confusing than many old icons.

      It's time to realize that a clean strict interface for the users is often better than all those flashy colors, gradients and animations that wastes time and productivity. Look into what users really do, not what you think the users should do with your software.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    2. Re:Confusing icon practices by Speare · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There's no such thing as "intuitive" computer interfaces. Instead, you want your interfaces to be "discoverable" and to build on other trained discoveries in a consistent way.

      From that example of the new YouTube buttons, I agree they're bizarre. Pretty much any button that JUST shows an arrow is useless for discoverability. Does the arrow mean 'move' or 'grow' or 'next' or some other action? By "discover," we don't mean to literally experiment with invoking the button to see what it does-- many people are too timid to press anything they don't already understand. Instead, discovery involves finding that there IS a button that PROBABLY does what you already intend to do. For example, follow the mental conversation: "this window is too small, I want to make it bigger, there's got to be a button around here somewhere for making it bigger, oh aha! that one looks like a dark box getting bigger, so let me try that, yep, that's better."

      --
      [ .sig file not found ]
    3. Re:Confusing icon practices by Foolicious · · Score: 4, Funny

      many people are too timid to press anything they don't already understand

      Given my experience in IT in corporate America, I would say that this is not only not the case, but REALLY not the case.

      --
      Please don't use "umm" or "err" or "erm".
    4. Re:Confusing icon practices by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There's no such thing as "intuitive" computer interfaces.

      No there are lots of intuitive interfaces, there just aren't many (if any) "universal" interfaces. You can give me flack for it, but I'm going to go ahead and say that the Slashdot comment interface is very intuitive. I know the reply button starts a reply. The Cancel button cancels it. The option button lets me see various options. Very intuitive, I have not needed to press any of these buttons to know their respective meaning. That by definition makes it intuitive.

      However, if I was from Japan, I wouldn't have any clue what any of these buttons mean. I'd probably get so fed up with it I'd request a Japanese version of Slashdot.

      So what it comes down to is trying to make something universally understood. Surprisingly enough, any country that has vehicular traffic uses Green for Go and Red for stop. Whether thats based on open standards or some psychological root, I don't know. So if you had an option that you could start or stop, putting the same image in green and the other in red would show which one starts it and which one stops it. Similarily, the symbols on every Media player for Play, Pause, Rewind, Fast Forward, Stop, and Record are also Universal across the planet. So it makes sense to put them on any application that plays media.

      There are a handful of things like this out there. It's not impossible to create an intuitive computer interface. The tricky part is to make it universal across all demographics of people who will use it, especially if there is a language barrier. This is where icons with the help of tooltip popups can be great.

    5. Re:Confusing icon practices by rantingkitten · · Score: 5, Insightful

      My experience is that people will click with wild abandon when they shouldn't, and be deathly afraid to do anything when there's no real harm involved.

      These are the people who will install anything they damn well please, change important settings for absolutely no reason "because it seemed like a good idea", set passwords on things that don't need passwords and then forget them, forward phone A to phone B and phone B to phone A because "I wanted them both to ring if I got a call," and other general nonsense. They have no problem screwing around to their heart's content and breaking everything and never learning.

      That same person will also submit endless tickets or place endless helpdesk calls because they were afraid to change a trivial setting that involves a single, labelled checkbox, because "I wasn't sure if that would mess anything up."

      --
      mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
  2. Thank you. by Cornwallis · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Really. That was a very nice article that made me think about some things I've never really considered.

    1. Re:Thank you. by stewbacca · · Score: 3, Informative

      Really. That was a very nice article that made me think about some things I've never really considered.

      I work in the field of design (mostly designing computer-based training) and can tell you that your sentiment is more common than not. Most people never think of design or how it impacts their daily lives.

      Because of this, I always suggest two books: The Design of Every Day Things and The Non-Designer's Design Book.

      Once you read these two books, you'll never look at things the same way again. You'll start noticing poorly designed things EVERYWHERE and wonder why it wasn't made better. You'll even formulate your own ways of making it better, which in turn (generally speaking) makes your own work better.

  3. It depends where you want to draw the line. by je+ne+sais+quoi · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If you're looking for a generic UI than I suppose easy to recognize generic symbols are the best. However, my dream is to make the UIs that actually mimic reality but the trick is keeping them fairly usuable still. I don't want it to be cartoonish, I want you to look at the UI and mistake it for a fantastic physical machine rather than a monitor. For example, if you look at the themes on the exchange site for e17, a lot of these not what you'd call an every day sort of theme but appeal to a particular aesthetic. Examples include steampunk, grunge, and baroque that incorporate photo realistic elements with varying efficacy (e.g. baroque is a cool concept but very hard on the eyes). The idea is to make the living-room computer more than just a tool, but a functional piece of art.

    What I'd love to do is make a theme that looks like the 1960s version of futuristic computers and space ship aesthetic from the movie 2001, with light-bulb lit buttons of different colored plastic, lots of milled metal highlights and dark plastic everywhere.

    --
    Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
  4. many words by Odinlake · · Score: 4, Insightful

    My, that was many words to say one thing over and over and over again. Pretty pictures though.

    1. Re:many words by __aaxwdb6741 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Redundancy turns precious information to noise.

    2. Re:many words by StripedCow · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Redundancy turns precious information to noise.

      Funny thing is, that was exactly what the article was all about!

      --
      If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
  5. Who else remembers the horror? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Informative

    Of the period in the early to mid 90's when pretty much every second-string audio player program, and there were a fair few in those days, decided that the One True Interface for any audio program was an inscrutable bitmap reproduction of a knobs-n'-sliders 70's stereo system?

    1. Re:Who else remembers the horror? by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Early to the Mid 90's is when most computers were able to do at least 640x480x8bit this was a big deal, before we were stuck on 320x200 resolution for 8bits (if you were lucky, I was a 320x200 2bits CGA) But in short this is when computers now able to show photo realistic pictures. And many developers have long waited for the ability to make programs that look so much like the real thing, As the earlier systems required a lot of artistry to come up with a cartoonish icon at best. So it was really a large scale experiment on how realistic you can make your program... What happened over time was people realized that being to realistic wasn't helpful and overlaying a 3d Interface with 2d controls was counter productive

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  6. Human language is real enough? by mcmonkey · · Score: 3, Insightful

    While this guy talks about realism, he's missing the point. If we didn't have each software designer creating its own visual language, then we wouldn't have the issue of how well that language is designed.

    When Microsoft has its own set of hieroglyphics, and Apple has theirs, and Adobe has theirs, and each OSS has its own language--which is similar to some existing commercial language to leverage user experience, but different enough to avoid getting sued--then the issue is not how well these languages are designed.

    The issue is, why should the user need to learn a new language for each application?

    You may say, well, if you put all your commands in English, then only English speakers can use your app. Fair enough. But if you put all your commands in some bespoke language spoken by no one, doesn't it follow then no one can use your app?

    Designers, pick an existing language used by your target market. Is that real enough?

    1. Re:Human language is real enough? by Eraesr · · Score: 3, Interesting

      When Microsoft has its own set of hieroglyphics, and Apple has theirs, and Adobe has theirs, and each OSS has its own language--which is similar to some existing commercial language to leverage user experience, but different enough to avoid getting sued--then the issue is not how well these languages are designed.

      The issue is, why should the user need to learn a new language for each application?

      I think the real underlying problem is that each software engineer has his own set of rules as well. Behavior of a specific function can be slightly different in one program than it could be in another program. If we use the same textual and visual representation for the function in both programs, the user would expect the exact same outcome, while that may not be true.

  7. Thank you, Captain Obvious! by bickerdyke · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That guy is 100% right, but there isn't anything new, let alone newsworthy in that post.
    But it has a few nice examples.

    On the other hand, that guy completly misses the intresting points: How did we end up with a "house" as an icon for your personal files* or a "cog" as a symbol for additional commands in the first place? A Leaf for a Web-Editor? A Trumpet for Network Connection? Lighthouse for a webbrowser?

    * That one sounds easy for an IT-pro who knows that the concept of a "home directory" is older than icons - but that only makes this meaning of "home" an old one, and not an intuitive one.

    --
    bickerdyke
  8. You're not alone by lyinhart · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You're not alone. In The Humane Interface, Jef Raskin rightfully pointed out that descriptive text beats icons on any day. I believe he even cited studies that supported his claims. But in documents pertaining to the original Macintosh (a project Raskin led before Steve Jobs made it his pet project), developers were encouraged to use icons instead of text whereever possible.

    Icons are used for two purposes - they generally take up a fixed number of pixels that generally use less space than text and they look pretty. The first reason is moot since even the cheapest display devices can spit out high resolution images with lots of space for text. And even if there isn't enough space, text labels can always be hidden via collapsible menus. Text can also be scaled to larger and smaller sizes as needed. The second reason is probably one of the biggest selling points for operating systems with pretty GUIs, e.g. Mac OS X. But with text labels, there's far less ambiguity about what they mean.

    Of course, there are situations where icons would be preferable. If you can't translate descriptive text for buttons in other languages, then an icon might be more convenient to use. And of course, they look good. I doubt the iPhone would sell so well if the pretty icons were replaced by text.

    --
    Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
  9. Uncanny! by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In other words, it's the Uncanny Valley in action.

  10. Re:The Traffic Cone by mini+me · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why the heck is the VLC media player icon an orange traffic cone??

    One day, people from the VIA association (VIA is a students’ network association with many clubs amongst those is VideoLAN.) came back drunk with a cone. They then began a cone collection (which is now quite impressive I must say). Some time later, the VideoLAN project began and they decided to use the cone as their logo.

    http://www.nanocrew.net/2005/06/23/vlc-cone/